Identification of Expressed Sequence Tag-simple Sequence Repeat Markers from the De Novo Transcriptome Sequence of Red Raspberry (Rubus idaeus L.)

Abstract

Rubus idaeus has remarkable economic and cultural value. Developing efficient simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers is necessary for the molecular breeding of red raspberry. In this study, SSR mining was performed using the de novo transcriptome sequence of R. idaeus. In total, 14,210 SSR sequences were identified from 11,158 SSR-containing unigenes. In all the SSR sequences, mononucleotide, dinucleotide, and trinucleotide repeats were the most common, and their number and percentage were 1323 (9.31%), 6752 (47.52%), and 4897 (34.46%), respectively. Of the mononucleotide and dinucleotide repeats, A/T, AG/CT, AT/AT, and AC/GT were more abundant and accounted for 9.09%, 37.82%, 6.51%, and 3.14% of the total repeat number, respectively. In the trinucleotide, tetranucleotide, pentanucleotide, and hexanucleotide repeats, the nucleotide (NT) patterns AAG/CTT, AAAG/CTTT, AAAAG/CTTTT, and AAGAGG/CCTCTT were the most frequent, and accounted for 14.11%, 0.38%, 0.57%, and 0.23% of the total SSRs, respectively. Of the 480 SSR-containing unigenes with gene ontology (GO) annotation, the classification results showed that they were mainly involved in binding, catalytic, and transporter molecular functions. Most of the 3441 SSR-containing unigenes with the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) annotation were involved in the following top five pathways: metabolic, RNA transport, spliceosome, protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum, and mRNA surveillance. Thirty pairs of primers derived from the red raspberry transcriptome were randomly selected to assess their polymorphism by using 15 red raspberry germplasms, in which the polymorphism information content (PIC) values ranged from 0.50 to 0.86, with a mean of 0.73, thereby indicating a high level of polymorphism. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean clustering results indicated that the thirty pairs of primers could precisely distinguish the germplasms. This study reveals the SSR distribution characteristics of red raspberry and provides a scientific basis for further genetic diversity studies and genetic linkage map construction for this species.