Identification of twenty novel polymorphic microsatellite DNA markers from transcripts of the pearl oyster Pinctada fucata using next-generation sequencing approach

Abstract

The pearl oyster, Pinctada fucata (Gould 1850) is a commercially important marine shellfish cultured for producing saltwater pearls mainly in China and Japan (Yu and Chu 2006). It is common in most areas of tropical and subtropical oceans and seas in the Pacific and Indian regions. In 1965, this specie was successfully propagated and reared under artificial conditions in Guangxi province in southern China and expanded rapidly to the neighbouring Guangdong and Hainan provinces subsequently (Meng et al. 1996). The pearls produced by the animals are referred to as ‘South China Sea Pearl’, accounting for over 90% production of the total marine pearls produced in China. For the last few years, some traits of P. fucata appear to have degenerated, due to overfishing, coastal water pollution and artificial propagation of years without recording their background, which hampered the advance of the pearl industry. Genetic improvement and culture of elite varieties should be carried out to prevent slowdown of the growth rate because of inbreeding depression and deterioration of the pearl quality. Microsatellite DNA markers have proved to be a useful tool for evaluating the level of genetic variation of natural populations in many fishery animals because of the high polymorphism, abundance, neutrality and codominance (Liu and Cordes 2004). Polymorphicmicrosatellite loci have been frequently applied in the analysis of genetic diversity of populations. In spite of some microsatellite loci in this species were reported (Tong et al. 2007; Kuang et al. 2009; Shi et al. 2009; Qu et al. 2010; You et al. 2012; Wu et al.