Isolation and characterization of 40 microsatellite loci for oriental river prawn (Macrobrachium nipponense) and cross-species utility

Oriental river prawn (Macrobrachium nipponense) is one of the important species for aquaculture in China. In this paper, two repeat-enriched libraries [(GT)(n) and (AG)(n)] enriched partial genomic library of Oriental river prawn were constructed for isolation and characterization of polymorphic microsatellites loci. Forty loci were polymorphic in the test population with 32 individuals from Taihu Lake. Number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 10. The observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.031 to 0.781 and from 0.031 to 0.904 respectively. Three loci showed significant departure from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium which probably due to small sample size. Twenty-Four out of the 40 loci were found to be polymorphic in M. hainanense. These polymorphic loci should be useful in genetic studies and fishery management of M. nipponense.