Whole genome survey and microsatellite motif identification of Artemia franciscana

The genus Artemia (Crustacea: Branchiopoda: Anostraca), known as brine shrimp, is an aquatic invertebrate living mainly in salt lakes. To date, seven species have been assigned to the genus Artemia excluding the parthenogenetic populations called Artemia parthenogenetic a [1]. Artemia species are important in aquaculture industry because their dormant cysts are easily hatched, and the nauplii can be used as a nutrient-rich food for fish [2,3]. In addition, they are also widely used as aquatic model organisms for ecotoxicity tests, along with Daphnia [4?6]. However, despite the significance of Artemia in aquacul ABSTRACT Artemia is an industrially important genus used in aquaculture as a nutritious diet for fish and as an aquatic model organism for toxicity tests. However, despite the significance of Artemia, genomic research remains incomplete and knowledge on its genomic characteristics is insufficient. In particular, Artemia franciscana of North America has been widely used in fisheries of other continents, resulting in invasion of native species. Therefore, studies on population genetics and molecular marker development as well as morphological analyses are required to investigate its population structure and to discriminate closely related species. Here, we used the Illumina Hi-Seq platform to estimate the genomic characteristics of A. franciscana through genome survey sequencing (GSS). Further, simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci were identified for microsatellite marker development. The predicted genome size was ?867 Mb using K-mer (a sequence of k characters in a string) analysis (K = 17), and heterozygosity and duplication rates were 0.655 and 0.809%, respectively. A total of 421467 SSRs were identified from the genome survey assembly, most of which were dinucleotide motifs with a frequency of 77.22%. The present study will be a useful basis in genomic and genetic research for A. franciscana.