In Silico Mining of Microsatellites in Coding Sequences of the Date Palm (Arecaceae) Genome, Characterization, and Transferability

• Main Authors: Frédérique Aberlenc-Bertossi, Karina Castillo, Christine Tranchant-Dubreuil, Emira Chérif, Marco Ballardini, Sabira Abdoulkader, Muriel Gros-Balthazard, Nathalie Chabrillange, Sylvain Santoni, Antonio Mercuri, Jean-Christophe Pintaud
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2014-01-01
• Series: Applications in Plant Sciences
• Subjects: Arecaceae; Coryphoideae; microsatellite/SSR mining; Phoenix dactylifera; transferability
• Online Access: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.3732/apps.1300058

Premise of the study: To complement existing sets of primarily dinucleotide microsatellite loci from noncoding sequences of date palm, we developed primers for tri- and hexanucleotide microsatellite loci identified within genes. Due to their conserved genomic locations, the primers should be useful in other palm taxa, and their utility was tested in seven other <i>Phoenix</i> species and in <i>Chamaerops</i>, <i>Livistona</i>, and <i>Hyphaene</i>. Methods and Results: Tandem repeat motifs of 3–6 bp were searched using a simple sequence repeat (SSR)–pipeline package in coding portions of the date palm draft genome sequence. Fifteen loci produced highly consistent amplification, intraspecific polymorphisms, and stepwise mutation patterns. Conclusions: These microsatellite loci showed sufficient levels of variability and transferability to make them useful for population genetic, selection signature, and interspecific gene flow studies in <i>Phoenix</i> and other Coryphoideae genera.