Development and characterization of 38 novel EST-SSRs for the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus

A total of 5728 sequences from the expressed sequence tag database of sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus were mined for microsatellite sequences. A total of 151 ESTs containing microsatellites were identified. Of 93 primer pairs designed, 56 amplified expected products and 38 showed polymorphism in 48 individuals tested. The number of alleles ranged from 2 to 10, and the observed and expected heterozygosities varied from 0.000 to 0.900 and from 0.332 to 0.884, respectively. No significant linkage disequilibrium (LD) between pairs of loci was found and 21 loci significantly deviated from the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE).