Morphological and molecular analysis of the endangered species Porphyra tenera (Bangiales, Rhodophyta)

Porphyra tenera Kjellman, widely cultivated in nori farms before the development of artificial seeding, is currently listed as an endangered species in Japan. To confirm whether a wild-collected gametophytic blade was P. tenera or the closely related species P. yezoensis Ueda, morphological observations and molecular analyses were made on the pure line HGT-1 isolated from a wild blade. This pure line was identified as P. tenera based on detailed morphological features. Sequences of the nuclear internal transcribed spacer region 1 and the plastid RUBISCO spacer revealed that P. tenera HGT-1 was clearly different from P. yezoensis f. narawaensis Miura, the main species cultivated in Japan. PCR-RFLP analysis of the internal transcribed spacer region was found to be a convenient method for rapid discrimination between P. tenera and cultivated P. yezoensis. The restriction patterns generated by the endonucleases Dra I and Hae III were useful for differentiating between both gametophytic and conchocelis stages of P. tenera HGT-1 and P. yezoensis f. narawaensis strains. Thus, PCR-RFLP analysis will serve as a valuable tool for rapid species identification of cultivated Porphyra strains, culture collections of Porphyra strains for breeding material and conservation of biodiversity, and, as codominant cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence markers for interspecific hybridization products between P. tenera and P. yezoensis f. narawaensis. Under the same culture conditions, rate of blade length increase and the blade length-to-width ratio were lower in P. tenera HGT-1 than in P. yezoensis f. narawaensis HG-4. The HGT-1 became mature more rapidly than HG-4 and had thinner blades.