XVI International Botanical Congess

To characterize the genes involved in A. bisporus basidiome formation, two cDNA libraries were constructed from tissues isolated from different stages of mushroom development on compost. Tissue from the primordium stage, which precedes the formation of a mature mushroom pileus, was used to construct one of the cDNA libraries, tissue from mature basidiomes was used for the construction of the other cDNA library. Randomly picked cDNA clones from both libraries were single-pass sequenced and DNA sequence comparisons were made using the BLAST algorithm. Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from both libraries were partially identified and classified. A few of the sequences characterized thus far encode enzymes involved in carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism and respiratory pathways. Many ESTs did not match sequences reported in the databases.