Research Article Genetic and Metabolic Intraspecific Biodiversity of Ganoderma lucidum Anna Pawlik, 1 Grzegorz Janusz, 1 Iwona Dwbska, 1 Marek Siwulski, 2 Magdalena Frdc, 3 and Jerzy Rogalski 1 1 Department of Biochemistry, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Akademicka 19, 20-033 Lublin, Poland 2 Department of Vegetable Crops, Pozna´ n University of Life Sciences, Dąbrowskiego 159, 60-594 Pozna´ n, Poland 3 Department of Plant and Soil System, Laboratory of Molecular and Environmental Microbiology, Institute of Agrophysics PAS, Do´ swiadczalna 4, 20-290 Lublin, Poland Correspondence should be addressed to Grzegorz Janusz; gjanusz@poczta.umcs.lublin.pl Received 3 September 2014; Accepted 12 February 2015 Academic Editor: Wen-Jun Li Copyright © 2015 Anna Pawlik et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Fourteen Ganoderma lucidum strains from diferent geographic regions were identiied using ITS region sequencing. Based on the sequences obtained, the genomic relationship between the analyzed strains was determined. All G. lucidum strains were also genetically characterized using the AFLP technique. G. lucidum strains included in the analysis displayed an AFLP proile similarity level in the range from 9.6 to 33.9%. Biolog FF MicroPlates were applied to obtain data on utilization of 95 carbon sources and mitochondrial activity. he analysis allowed comparison of functional diversity of the fungal strains. he substrate utilization proiles for the isolates tested revealed a broad variability within the analyzed G. lucidum species and proved to be a good proiling technology for studying the diversity in fungi. Signiicant diferences have been demonstrated in substrate richness values. Interestingly, the analysis of growth and biomass production also diferentiated the strains based on the growth rate on the agar and sawdust substrate. In general, the mycelial growth on the sawdust substrate was more balanced and the fastest fungal growth was observed for GRE3 and FCL192. 1. Introduction Ganoderma lucidum (Curtis) P. Karst belongs to the wood decomposing fungi that have been used for medicinal pur- poses for centuries particularly in China, Japan, and Korea, where it was oten associated with health and healing, long life, knowledge, and happiness. he common names for preparations include Lingzhi, Munnertake, Sachitake, Reishi, and Youngzhi [1]. Moreover, numerous publications were produced, indicating that G. lucidum may possess antial- lergic, antioxidant, analgesic, antifungal, antiinlammatory, antitumor, antiviral, antiparasitic, cardiovascular, antidia- betic, immunomodulating, hepatoprotective, hypotensive and hypertensive, kidney and nerve tonic, and sexual poten- tiator properties; it also prevents bronchitis and inhibits platelet aggregations and lowers blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels [1–11]. In spite of the biotechnological and medicinal importance of Ganoderma species, little is known about their current taxonomy and biology. It is evident that the traditional tax- onomy of the Ganoderma complex based on morphological characters has long been chaotic, thus limiting its uses [12, 13]. Due to the phenotypic plasticity, morphological stasis, and the lack of keys and accessible type specimens, DNA sequence data play a vital role in characterizing the species within the G. lucidum complex [13–16]. Phylogenetic studies have proved that extensive convergence or parallelism of morphological characters has occurred during the evolution of Ganoderma [17–19]. Because of its speciic interhybridization, the genetic background, however, remains relatively unclear and the genetic distance between G. lucidum and other Ganoderma species remains unevaluated. Consequently, it is diicult to distinguish Ganoderma strains, especially closely related strains [20, 21]. he development of tools aimed at the clear-cut and safe identiication and assessment of the genetic variability of wild and cultivated strains is thus a fundamental goal of molecular Hindawi Publishing Corporation BioMed Research International Volume 2015, Article ID 726149, 13 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/726149