Development and characterization of microsatellite markers for molecular genetic diversity in Atrina pectinata

The pen shell, Atrina pectinata, is an economically valuable species that is widely distributed along the coastal waters of temperate and tropical areas, mainly growing in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Eight novel microsatellite loci from the genome of A. pectinata were developed using fast isolation by amplified fragment length polymorphism of sequence containing repeats. The loci were screened in 30 wild individuals. The results showed that the number of alleles per locus and the polymorphism information content ranged from 2-6 and from 0.233-0.447, respectively. Observed and expected heterozygosities varied from 0.2069-0.7931 and 0.1887-0.5124, respectively. No significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were detected. These microsatellite loci will be useful for further population studies of genetic diversity, population structure assessment, and conservation of A. pectinata.