Plant & Animal Genome IX Conference Plant & Animal Genome IX Conference
Workshop: Aquaculture
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Microsatellite loci were developed for use in a commercial breeding program of white sturgeon Acipenser transmontanus. Our work consisted of several stages: development of white sturgeon specific microsatellite loci, quantification of the mode of inheritance of these loci, and developing applications for these markers in an existing commercial broodstock management program. Nine white sturgeon specific microsatellite loci were developed and optimized. A subsequent inheritance study revealed several of these loci to be highly duplicated, reflective of the octoploid-derivative nature of the white sturgeon genome. We proposed that instead of scoring each locus as tetrasomic or octosomic system, that each allele be scored as its own dominant marker, similar to RAPDs or AFLPs. The primary applications of these loci are for estimating parentage and relatedness in mixed family lots of white sturgeon. In a mixed lot of nine families made from a three by three factorial cross, we were able to successfully reassign individuals to both sire and dam with 99% accuracy using only three loci when we had molecular data on all possible parents. We then tested the efficacy of using these markers for estimating relatedness between individuals when molecular data on the parents was unavaliable. To accomplish this, we used relatedness algorithms developed for dominant markers and then employed a phylogenetic inference tool, UPGMA, to estimate the structure of a family tree from the relatedness estimates between individual animals. This approach correctly clustered all groups of full sibs into distinct separate groups.