Isolation and characterization of twelve new polymorphic microsatellite markers in the miiuy croaker (Miichthys miiuy) genome

Abstract

The miiuy croaker, Miichthys miiuy, belongs to the family Sciaenidae. It is mainly distributed from the East China Sea to the western Japan Sea (Masuda 1984; Zhang and Hong 2000). Because of its taste, medicinal and high nutritive values it is a very important food species with a worldwide demand (Zhu et al. 1963; Peng et al. 2010). Due to overexploitation, natural resource of miiuy croaker has drastically decreased in recent years. Although it is a highvalued marine food fish species, little information is available at present to understand the biology and genetic status of M. miiuy (Peng et al. 2010; Xu et al. 2011). Microsatellite markers are often the choice for population genetic studies (Liu et al. 2009). Therefore, to facilitate a better understanding of the genetic diversity and population structure of the miiuy croaker for conservation, we have carried out isolation and characterization of polymorphic microsatellites in M. miiuy. In this study, 12 polymophic microsatellite markers were isolated from enriched genomic libraries for miiuy croaker, Miichthys miiuy, providing additional tools for studying the genetic diversity of this species. These polymophic microsatellite markers were characterized using 24 individuals. The number of alleles at each locus varied from 3 to 8, with an average of 5.5 alleles per locus. The expected and observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.506 to 0.825 and from 0.167 to 0.875 respectively. Tests for departure from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) and linkage disequilibrium (LD) were conducted for this population. After sequential Bonferroni correction, three out of 12 loci showed significant departure from HWE, and significant pairwise