Genome specific microsatellites in wild crucifers: Cross species/genera transferability

Abstract

A high degree of colinearity is now known to exist between closely related species in Brassicaceae, which theoretically allows the exchange of markers between them. Objective of this study was to explore the transferability of simple sequence repeat (SSR) primer pairs identified in crop Brassicas to related wild crucifers. Here, we report and validate transferability of 92, 67 and 105 SSR primer pairs, identified in three diploid <em>Brassica</em> genomes, to <em>Brassica fruticulosa, Erucastrum abyssinicum</em> and <em>Diplotaxis tennuisiliquae</em> with respective amplification of 259, 141 and 291 alleles. One thousand six hundred and thirty three (394 in RL 1359, 451 in PBR 210, 402 in RLC 1 and 386 in UP) alleles were detected in cultivated species. In cultivated <em>Brassica</em> species, the average number of alleles amplified were 3.31, 2.19, 2.97 whereas in wild species the values recorded were 2.70, 1.67, 2.32 for A, B and C genome SSR markers, respectively, however respective average allele values per germplasm set were 2.82 (cultivated) and 2.23 (wild). The average polymorphism information content (PIC) values of A genome primer pairs in wild species was 0.77, ranging from 0.32 to 0.94. These transferable markers can now be exploited for further genetic and introgressive breeding studies. The transferability success generally decreased as the evolutionary distance between the source and target species increased.