Microsatellite marker identification from transcriptome derived sequences of the red swamp crawfish, Procambarus clarkii

The red swamp crawfish (Procambarus clarkii) is an important aquatic species that is widely distributed in most provinces of China. In this study, a high-throughput method was used to discover microsatellite markers in the P. clarkii genome. From 22,652 isotigs assembled after P. clarkii transcriptome sequencing, we identified 6689 putative microsatellite loci. We chose 14 of these expressed sequence tag-derived markers for further analysis. The number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 17, with an average of 7.07. The values of observed heterozygosity and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.188 to 0.708 and from 0.266 to 0.805, respectively. The identified P. clarkii microsatellite markers are highly polymorphic, and therefore, will be useful for genetic diversity and population structure studies. Therefore, this work may impact species conservation and management programs.