Development of eighteen polymorphic microsatellite markers in Scylla paramamosain by 5' anchored PCR technique.

The mud crab Scylla paramamosain plays a significant role in fishery resources in China. In this study, we developed 18 polymorphic microsatellite markers in this important crab by 5' anchored PCR technique. A total of 125 alleles were detected in a single population of 32 individuals of S. paramamosain. The number of alleles per locus ranged from five to nine, with the allele size ranging from 166 to 316 bp. The polymorphism information content (PIC), observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.39 to 0.88, from 0.33 to 0.92 and from 0.42 to 0.86, respectively. Three loci (Scypa13, Scypa14 and Scypa15) deviated significantly from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) after Bonferroni correction (P < 0.0028), and no linkage disequilibrium was found between loci pairs. These polymorphic microsatellite markers will be useful for the study of population genetic structure, construction of genetic linkage maps and mapping of economically quantitative trait loci (QTL) in S. paramamosain.