Background: The dried sclerotium of medicinal fungus Polyporus
umbellatus (Pers.) Fries has many pharmacological functions such as
diuretic and anticancer activity, in which high-content polysaccharides
may play an important role. However, RNA isolation is difficult in
filamentous fungi and lacking in P. umbellatus. Results: Five methods
for RNA extraction from five strains collected from four provinces were
assessed for their ability to recover a high-quality RNA applicable for
sequence-related amplification polymorphism (SRAP) PCR and
GDP-D-mannose pyrophosphorylase (GMP) gene expression profiles. Both
A260/A280 and A260/A230 ratios of the best Trizol Plus + RNAiso-mate
for Plant Tissue method are around 2 with a yield of 1122.00 \ub1
0.21 ng \u3bcl-1. The Trizol method also showed good quality with the
yield 469.60 ng \u3bcl-1. The SRAP PCR amplified clear and polymorphic
bands in all five cDNA samples transcribed from RNA by using primer
Me4-Em4. GMP gene fragment (1251 bp) was successfully amplified by
RT-PCR, suggesting the integrity of isolated RNA. Conclusion:All these
results showed that the total RNA isolated by this protocol is of
sufficient quality for subsequent molecular applications