Abstract

Auricularia auricula-judae, an important edible and medicinal mushroom was first cultivated in China more than one thousand years ago. In this study, we developed a simple and rapid polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based diagnostic tool for identifying A. auricula-judae from other morphologically similar Auricularia species.Based on the sequence analysis of intergenic spacer 1 (IGS1) in genus Auricularia, two species-specific primer combinations were designed from IGS1 sequence of A. auricula-judae, both of them can generate DNA fragments of different size unique toA. auricula-judae. The validity of this two primer combinations were confirmed by correctly amplifying species-specific fragments from genomic DNA of another 32 A. auricula-judae strains. To our knowledge, this was the first study on development of species-specific primers via IGS1 sequence in jelly fungi and also the first application of IGS1 sequence in genus Auricularia.

Key words: Auricularia, Auricularia auricula-judae, intergenic spacer, species-specific primer.