Isolation and Characterization of Ten Novel Microsatellite Loci in Chum Salmon (Oncorhynchus keta)

Abstract

Chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) is an endangered species in China. The numbers of chum salmon have declined sharply in the wild, especially the population entering into the Tumen River (Jilin Province) which is the boundary river between China and North Korea. In order to solve the conflict between China and North Korea about the ownership of the population, we developed ten novel microsatellite loci for future studies of paternity identification.The result showed that the observed and expected heterozygosity ranges were 0.480–0.900 and 0.645–0.885, respectively. The polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0.595 to 0.864, with a mean of 0.776.