Development and Characterization of Twenty-Three Novel Polymorphic Microsatellite Markers for Mussel, Mytilus coruscus

Mytilus coruscus is one of the main mussel species in China, with a widely range of aquaculture markets and importantly economic value. In this study, we used one hundred and twenty primers pairs to screen all microsatellite loci and twenty-three polymorphic loci were identified. The number of alleles per loci ranged from six to twenty-one with an average of 12.913 and the allele size varied between 161 and 470 bp. The observed and expected heterozygosity varied from 0.143 to 1.000 and from 0.351 to 0.926, with average values of 0.614 and 0.771, respectively. Eighteen loci accorded with the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE)(P > 0.05). The polymorphism information content (PIC) value ranged from 0.340 to 0.921 with an average of 0.751. These markers will help the further studies, provide more useful tools to choose for researching genetic diversity and population structure and provide more in-depth understanding of Mytilus coruscus.