Isolation and characterization of polymorphic microsatellite loci in large yellow croaker, Larimichthys crocea

An (AC)n-microsatellite-enriched library for Larimichthys crocea was constructed in this study. Primers for fifty simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci were synthesized and genotyped on 30 L. crocea individuals from Guanjingyang wild population (WP) in Fujian Province and 38 individuals from Ningbo cultured population (CP) in Zhejiang Province. Only 21 loci were successfully amplified and polymorphic in two populations. In WP, the observed heterozygosity (H_O) ranged from 0.233 to 0.900 and the expected heterozygosity (H_E) ranged from 0.326 to 0.893, with an average of 7.8 alleles/locus, the polymorphism information content (PIC) ranged from 0.283 to 0.866 (mean 0.731). In CP, the H_O ranged from 0.189 to 0.892 and the H_E ranged from 0.333 to 0.800, with an average of 4.4 alleles/locus. The probability test showed significant departures from HWE in 9 and 2 of the 21 loci in WP and in CP, respectively. Deficiency of heterozygotes at four loci showed the presence of null alleles (P <0.01). The PIC of 20 microsatellite loci in WP were greater than 0.50. Overall, these novel markers are potentially useful for the study of population genetics, construction of genetic linkage and quantitative trait loci maps in large yellow croaker.