Genetic variation analysis of two silver carp populations in the middle and upper Yangtze River by microsatellite

Abstract

Thirty nine microsatellite markers were applied to analyze the genetic diversity of two silver carp populations in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The following parameters were calculated: average observed number of alleles, average effective number of alleles, genetic heterozygosity, polymorphism information content (PIC), genetic similarity coefficient, genetic distance, Hardy-Weinberg balance deflection index. These results indicated that the average observed number of alleles in each microsatellite locus of the Wanzhou population and Jianli populations is 6.128 and 4.974, respectively; the average effective number of alleles is 4.107 and 3.395, respectively; and the number of total alleles of these 39 microsatellite loci is 259. The PIC of polymorphic loci varies between 0.077-0.865, and the average PIC is 0.617. The average observed heterozygosity (Ho) of two populations is 0.834 and 0.775, respectively, and the average expective heterzygosity (He) is 0.713 and 0.623, respectively. The genetic similarity coefficient of two populations is 0.618 and the genetic distance of these populations is 0.482. These results indicated that the two populations belong to different popula-tions for the obvious genetic differentiation.