Isolation and characterization of thirty-eight microsatellite loci for the Pinus wangii, an endangered species

Piuns wangii Hu et Cheng is an endangered five-needle pine species, with scattered populations and scare individuals. To study its genetic diversity and better address conservation programs, 506 novel microsatellite markers were developed by mining the transcriptome database of P. lambertiana. 117 loci were able to amplify a fragment of expected size in P. wangii, of which 38 were polymorphic. The number of alleles of these 38 EST-SSRs in 16 individuals varied from 2 to 6, with an average of 2.6. The observed (Ho) and expected (He) heterozygosity values ranged from 0.000 to 1.000 (averaging 0.532) and 0.117-0.693 (averaging 0.394), respectively. Twenty-three loci showed significant departure from HWE after Bonferroni correction. This was the first report of candidate molecular markers on P. wangii, which will facilitate future analyses of genetic diversity and population structure.