Abstract
The genetic relatedness among thirty-three natural isolates of an edible mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus, collected from Japan, Europe, U.S.A. and Korea was characterized by isoelectric focusing on polyacrylamide gels. The activities of acid phosphatase, alcohol dehydrogenase, esterase, laccase and malate dehydrogenase displayed 19, 9, 32, 11 and 10 distinct isozyme patterns, respectively. By combining the isozyme patterns obtained with the five enzymes, every isolate showed its own distinct electrophoretic phenotype. A distance matrix calculated between all pairs of the 33 electrophoretic phenotypes based on the presence or absence of isozyme bands was analyzed by the group-average method. Results of the cluster analysis assigned the 33 phenotypes into four major groups, each of which coincided with geographically distinct populations. These results suggest that geographical distance between natural populations of P. ostreatus is correlated with the genetic divergence.
