TITLE:
RAPD Markers and Genetic Information Entropy in Environmental Monitoring: A Case Study with Wild Mushrooms
AUTHORS:
Charoula Psallida, Dimitrios Argyropoulos
KEYWORDS:
Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA, Shannon’s Index, Entropy, Biodiversity, Dendrogram
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.11 No.9,
September
8,
2023
ABSTRACT: Mushrooms have a remarkable scientific value due to their nutritional,
medicinal properties and industrial applications in enzyme production, so that
effort in the maintenance of native wild mushroom varieties is increasing. The present study focuses on the use of Random
Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers for biodiversity measure of
wild mushroom species of the Northwest mountainous region of Greece. Data mining of similarity matrices from RAPD analysis was used to extract measurable entropy parameters for
mushroom biodiversity monitoring based on Shannon’s information entropy.
Shannon information index provides an easy assessment of the entropy of the genetic information of the
germplasm per mushroom species while the total equitability index (EH) = 0.871 offers an overall estimation of the genetic variation evenness of all species in the population of
the studied mushrooms. Application of RAPDs with parallel entropy analysis
is an easily applicable and low-cost valuable technology in environmental
monitoring, using genetic information of wild mushroom species as an indicator
that can lead to future actions in biodiversity maintenance and germplasm
protection. The provided methodology can
serve as a pilot procedure enriched with other environmental factors to
monitor and protect wild mushroom communities native to the Greek countryside or in any part of the world
and provide comparable results about
biodiversity from different regions using common entropy indices.