Type studies on Phellinus baumii and Phellinus linteus

Abstract

Phellinus linteus is famous for its anti-tumor activity and has been widely reported in Korea. Investigation of samples from China, Korea, Costa Rica, and Mexico revealed that the temperate East Asian species known as P. linteus is actually P. baumii. Morphological characters differentiating the two species were the sizes of pores and basidiospores and the thickness of spore walls. To improve the method for discriminating between the two species, molecular approaches were carried out through direct amplification and restriction enzyme digestion of ITS sequences. All the strains of P. baumii showed no polymorphism, but those of P. linteus were digested by DraI and HpaII and formed unique restriction patterns, suggesting that RFLP analysis of ITS can be used as an efficient typing method to differentiate the two look-alike species, P. baumii and P. linteus.