Isolation and characterization of microsatellite DNA loci from Naihai cutlassfish (Trichiurus nanhaiensis)

Abstract

The Naihai cutlassfish (Trichiurus nanhaiensis) is an important commercial fish species. In this study, we report 25 microsatellite DNA markers for T. nanhaiensis. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 10 in a sample of 37 individuals. Observed and expected heterozygosities per locus varied from 0.300 to 1.000 and from 0.403 to 0.845, respectively. Thirteen of 25 loci showed significant departure from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) after sequential Bonferroni correction (P < 0.002). No significant linkage disequilibrium between pairs of loci was found. These microsatellite markers will provide powerful tools for investigating population genetic structure, population history and conservation management of T. nanhaiensis. The family Trichiuridae, including 32 species in nine genera, is generally benthopelagic on continental shelves and slopes from tropical to warm temperate waters (Nakamura and Parin 1993). Three species of genus Trichiurus were identified in South China Sea based on morphological characteristics and results of isozyme electrophoresis (Wang et al. 1992, 1993). T. nanhaiensis ranks second only behind T. haumela in tonnage of fish caught and both are important commercial species in South China Sea. So far, the fisheries biology, growth or mortality parameters and genetic structure of T. haumela have been studied, but few studies on T. nanhaiensis have been reported (Zhang et al. 1998; Chakraborty et al. 2005; Zhu and Qiu 2005; Hsu et al. 2007; Yang et al. 2007). In the present study, we developed 25 microsatellite loci isolated from a dinucleotide-enriched genomic library of T. nanhaiensis using the fast isolation by AFLP of sequences containing repeats (FIASCO) according to previous report (Zane et al. 2002). These markers should provide a tool for