title: Bioinformatic mining of EST-SSR loci in the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas.
abstract: A set of expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeat (EST-SSR) markers of the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, was developed through bioinformatic mining of the GenBank public database. As of June 30, 2007, a total of 5132 EST sequences from GenBank were downloaded and screened for di-, tri- and tetra-nucleotide repeats, with criteria set at a minimum of 5, 4 and 4 repeats for the three categories of SSRs respectively. Seventeen polymorphic microsatellite markers were characterized. Allele numbers ranged from 3 to 10, and the observed and expected heterozygosity values varied from 0.125 to 0.770 and from 0.113 to 0.732 respectively. Eleven loci were at Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE); the other six loci showed significant departure from HWE (P < 0.01), suggesting possible presence of null alleles. Pairwise check of linkage disequilibrium (LD) indicated that 11 of 136 pairs of loci showed significant LD (P < 0.01), likely due to HWE present in single markers. Cross-species amplification was examined for five other Crassostrea species and reasonable results were obtained, promising usefulness of these markers in oyster genetics.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Marine Bio-resource Sustainable Utilization, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 164 West Xingang Road, Guangzhou 510301, China.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology; D049896:Crassostrea / Q000235:genetics*; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D018598:Minisatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics*; D010140:Pacific Ocean