A rapid and economical method of simultaneous extraction of DNA and RNA from seaweeds has been developed by the use of lithium chloride. Lithium chloride facilitates the softening of cell walls resulting in a decrease in both compressive and tensile modulus of elasticity. The DNA was characterized by high molecular weight larger than 27 kb and a relative lack of carbohydrate and protein contamination. The DNA and RNA extracted by the method from many seaweeds were of sufficient quality to be used as a template for per amplification with a plant intergenic gene primer set, for RAPD analysis with arbitrary primers, and for differential display with arbitrary primers in the morphologically distinct regions of the matured Porphyra thallus. The cDNA polymorphism indicated that the reproductive tissue types (male, female, patch) had a relatively high degree of similarity; the vegetative tissue types (dividing, non-dividing) also showed a similar pattern with respect to each other. Holdfast tissue had very low similarity with the other tissues, but appeared most similar to vegetative non-dividing tissue type.