Development of expressed sequence tag-derived microsatellite markers for Saccharina (Laminaria) japonica

Expressed sequence tag-derived microsatellite markers (EST-SSR) were generated and characterized in Laminaria japonica using data mining from updated public EST databases and polymorphism testing. Fifty-eight of 578 ESTs (10.0%) containing various repeat motifs were used to design polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification primers. A total of 12 pairs of primer were generated and used in the PCR amplification. Alleles per locus ranged from two to ten (average of 5.7). The observed heterozygosities and expected heterozygosities were from 0.045 to 0.543 and from 0.056 to 0.814, respectively. All loci were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and no linkage disequilibrium was detected. These robust, informative, and potentially transferable polymorphic markers appear suitable for population, genetic, parentage, and mapping studies of L. japonica.