Study on population genetic structure of Liangshan semi-wool sheep using microsatellite markers.

To evaluate the genetic polymorphisms and to search for available molecular markers for Liangshan semi-wool sheep, 15 microsatellite markers of 187 samples were amplified by multiplex PCR. A total of 133 alleles were detected, with the number of alleles ranging from 6 (BM2830) to 15 (McM130), giving a mean No. of 8.87 alleles per locus. The total and mean effective allele No. were 64.29 and 4.29, respectively. The observed heterozygosity and expected heterozygosity were from 0.4486 (McM130) to 0.8877 (BMS1678) and 0.5704 (BMS0887) to 0.8373 (McM130), respectively. Mean observed heterozygosity and mean expected heterozygosity were 0.672 and 0.7536. Polymorphism information content values were from 0.5202 (BMS0887) to 0.8183 (McM130) and mean polymorphism information content of the 15 microsatellite loci was 0.7184. All 15 microsatellite loci were highly polymorphic, which showed that there were rich genetic polymorphisms at these detected microsatellite loci in Liangshan semi-wool sheep. Comparison of allele distributions among loci did not reveal consistent shapes. Distributions were centralized in some cases, whereas in others some kind of skewness was evident. Complex evolution at these loci is an important factor in the irregularity of microsatellite distributions.