DOUGLAS-FIR SSR MARKER DEVELOPMENT AND MAPPING

¹ School of Forest Resources, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16870 USA

² Biotechnology Laboratory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z3

One step in moving from pedigree specific to species-wide genetic linkage maps is the creation of frame work maps with highly informative and transferable genetic markers. Markers of known sequence are more expensive to develop than random markers, but also more suitable for framework map construction. Microsatellite DNA markers are becoming widely used for this purpose due to their codominance, transferability, large number of alleles per locus, and high levels of expected polymorphism. In developing SSR markers for Douglas-fir, we took the approach of determining the relative abundance of SSRs and then constructing repeat-specific libraries for the most abundant motifs. We sequenced over 1,000 inserts containing AG-, AC-, or ATG repeats, from which primer pairs for approximately 100 SSR loci were synthesized. The results of characterizing and mapping these SSR markers will be presented.