Genetic diversity of wild population of Pyropia haitanensis based on SSR analysis

Abstract

Genetic diversity analysis was conducted on 80 individuals of 4 populations of non-bred Pyropia haitanensis by simple sequence repeat (SSR) method. Using 15 pairs of microsatellite primers, 37 polymorphic loci were amplified, representing 94.9% of all loci. At the population level, the percentage of polymorphic bands (P) and polymorphism information content (PIC) were 66.67–84.62% and 0.481–0.488, with average value at 73.72% and 0.483, respectively. Expected heterozygosity (He) and Shannon's information index (I) were 0.279 and 0.434, respectively, at the species level, and 0.233 and 0.356 at population level. According to the coefficient of gene differentiation (GST), a large proportion of genetic variance (83.6%) of P. haitanensis was among individuals within populations, only 16.4% genetic variance was among populations, which was identified with the moderate gene flow value (Nm = 2.542). UPGMA clustered the 4 populations into 3 groups, and no significant correlation was found between the genetic distance and the corresponding geographic distance among the populations.