Microsatellite markers derived from bay scallop Argopecten irradians expressed sequence tags

When data mining was performed on the National Center for Biotechnology Information database, a total of 2038 sequences from five different expressed sequence tag libraries were registered. Eighty sequences (3.9%) were found to contain 91 microsatellites. Clustering analysis indicated that 23 sequences of these expressed sequence tags fell into five clusters and that the remaining 57 sequences were independent. The di- and tri-nucleotide repeat motifs accounted for approximately 62.1% of the total microsatellites. The most abundant dinucleotide microsatellite was TA, followed by GA and CA, and the trinucleotide microsatellites GAT and GGT showed a high abundance. Nineteen sequences representing di-, tri-, tetra- and penta-nucleotides motifs were chosen for the design of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers. Of primer pairs, 16 successfully amplified scorable PCR products and 11 revealed polymorphism, with the average polymorphic information content value of 0.5082 and 3.1 alleles per locus. A transferability analysis on three other related scallop species, Chlamys farreri, Chlamys nobilis and Patinopecten yessoenssis, showed that only 1 of 16 primer pairs could amplify PCR products with the expected size in Chlamys nobilis.