FIRST IDENTIFICATION OF POLYMORPHIC MICROSATELLITE MARKERS IN THE BURGUNDY TRUFFLE, TUBER AESTIVUM (TUBERACEAE)

Premise of the study: Tuber aestivum, the most common truffle in Europe, plays an important role in the commercial truffle market. For the first time, microsatellite primers were developed to investigate polymorphism within this species. Methods and Results: Using direct shotgun pyrosequencing, 15 polymorphic microsatellites were identified out of the 7784 perfect microsatellites present in the 534 620 reads obtained. Tested on 75 samples, these microsatellites were highly polymorphic. The number of alleles varied from four to 15, and the expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.266 to 0.620. A multilocus analysis allowed the identification of 63 genotypes over the 75 samples analyzed. Conclusions: Direct shotgun pyrosequencing is a fast and relatively low-cost technique allowing identification of microsatellites in nonmodel species. The microsatellites developed in this study will be useful in population genetic studies to infer the evolutionary history of this species.