Twenty-four novel polymorphic microsatellite markers from oriental river prawn (Macrobrachium nipponense)

The oriental river prawn (Macrobrachium nipponense) is an important freshwater prawn species in China. We reported the isolation and characterization of 24 novel polymorphic microsatellite loci isolated from genomic DNA in this species enriched by (CA)(15) and (CT)(15) probes. The variability of these microsatellites were tested on 60 individuals collected from Hongze Lake (China). The average allele number was 15.2 per locus, ranging from 9 to 25. The observed heterozygosity was from 0.1333 to 0.9667 and the expected heterozygosity was from 0.8391 to 0.9570. 9 of the 24 microsatellites did not conform to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, whereas all the microsatellite loci have shown a high degree of polymorphism information content (PIC > 0.5). These microsatellites can be used to study economic traits of QTL position, population genetic diversity and the construction of the genetic mapping for Macrobrachium nipponense in the future.