Mining and utilization of mushroom ESTs for microsatellites

In the present study we report on the exploitation of expressed sequence tags (ESTs); (1) to investigate whether microsatellite densities are significantly differed among Pleurotus ostreatus, Lentinula edodes and Agaricus bisporus ESTs, (2) between development stages of mycelia and fruiting bodies and (3) to identify microsatellite primer pairs that could be used in mushroom genetic studies. Analyses of ESTs indicated that three mushroom species and tissues showed statistically significant microsatellite densities. A total of 23 EST-microsatellite primer pairs were developed and tested on two species of mushrooms. The use of these microsatellite primer pairs could be used in genetic studies of mushroom species.