Effectiveness of 10 polymorphic microsatellite markers for parentage and pedigree analysis in plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae).
BACKGROUND
The plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) is an underground-dwelling mammal, native to the Tibetan plateau of China. A set of 10 polymorphic microsatellite loci has been developed earlier. Its reliability for parentage assignment has been tested in a plateau pika population. Two family groups with a known pedigree were used to validate the power of this set of markers.


RESULTS
The error in parentage assignment using a combination of these 10 loci was very low as indicated by their power of discrimination (0.803 - 0.932), power of exclusion (0.351 - 0.887), and an effectiveness of the combined probability of exclusion in parentage assignment of 99.999%.


CONCLUSIONS
All the offspring of a family could be assigned to their biological mother; and their father or relatives could also be identified. This set of markers therefore provides a powerful and efficient tool for parentage assignment and other population analyses in the plateau pika.
Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 59 XiGuan Avenue, Xining, Qinghai 810001, PR China.
Kexin
K
Li
Jianing
J
Geng
Jiapeng
J
Qu
Yanming
Y
Zhang
Songnian
S
Hu
D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D005828:Genetics, Population; D005838:Genotype; D007793:Lagomorpha / Q000235:genetics*; D008126:Lod Score; D008297:Male; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics*; D010375:Pedigree; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA