Development of 25 Novel Microsatellite Loci and Genetic Variation Analysis in Breeding Populations of the Pearl Oyster,Pinctada fucata

In this study, we screened 103,050 gene sequences of Pinctada fucata and identified 1450 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) distributing in 1355 sequences, in which 97 have sufficient flanking sequences for primer design, and 25 novel microsatellite loci were stable and polymorphic with N_a which varied from 2 to 6. Six microsatellite loci were found in the open reading frame of their corresponding sequences. With the 25 SSR loci, five breeding populations and a wild population, a total of 240 individuals from wild population (W), three consecutive selected populations (G₁, G_2, and G₃), and two backcross populations (D_o, D_r) (40 individuals per population) were assayed. In these populations, we detected 108 alleles of 111 bp to 362 bp. Each population had mean H_o of 0.5718–0.7366 and mean H_e of 0.5830–0.6954. Except the F_st = 0.0697 (W vs. G₃), pairwise F_st values ranged from 0.0131 to 0.0473, the genetic identity coefficients varied from 0.8688 to 0.9663, and genetic distance ranged from 0.0343 to 0.1307, all of these suggested that the breeding populations had genetic differentiation but at a low level generally. Besides, all the genetic index values, backcross populations (D_o, D_r) were higher than corresponding G₃ values, indicating that backcross could make the offspring incline to the recurrent parents.