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Utility of pairwise mtDNA genetic distances for predicting cross-species microsatellite amplification and polymorphism success in fishes

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Abstract

In many studies involving microsatellites cross-species amplification, primers designed for one (source) species are used to amplify homologous loci in related (target) species. However, it is not clear how closely related the species must be to attain significant success. Genetic divergence is a clear and easy way to assess similarity between species and provides an accurate measure of their evolutionary distance. Eight Mediterranean target species of the family Serranidae were analysed using twelve primers developed for Serranus cabrilla. Additionally, two mitochondrial genes (12S rRNA and 16S rRNA) were chosen on the basis of their extensive use in phylogenetic and evolutionary analyses to compute genetic divergence between the species. Significant negative correlations were found between genetic divergence and both cross-species amplification and maintained polymorphism of microsatellite markers, which could be generalized by gathering information from different fish studies. The success of obtaining amplifiable and polymorphic microsatellite loci can be a priori approximated knowing the mtDNA genetic divergence between a given source and target species using our inferred regression equations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Machordom for her helpful comments on the manuscript. We are grateful to Sr. Acevedo, K. Ballesteros, J. Chías, D. Díaz, J. Fabré, E. Sala, O. Sanz, and M. Zabala for providing us with samples from different locations. We are also especially indebted to A. Garcia-Rubies for his helpful comments on the statistical analyses. This research was supported by a Predoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia to J.C. (AP2001-0225). Research was funded by projects CTM2004-05265, CGL2006-13423 from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and 119/2003 from the Spanish Ministerio de Medio Ambiente. The authors are part of the research groups 2005SGR-00995 and 2005SGR-00277 of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre d’Estudis Avançats de Blanes (CEAB-CSIC), Carr. Acc. Cala St. Francesc 14, Blanes, 17300, Girona, Catalunya, Spain

    Josep Carreras-Carbonell & Enrique Macpherson

  2. Dept. Genètica, Univ. Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain

    Marta Pascual

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  1. Josep Carreras-Carbonell
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  2. Enrique Macpherson
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  3. Marta Pascual
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Correspondence to Josep Carreras-Carbonell.

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Carreras-Carbonell, J., Macpherson, E. & Pascual, M. Utility of pairwise mtDNA genetic distances for predicting cross-species microsatellite amplification and polymorphism success in fishes. Conserv Genet 9, 181–190 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-007-9322-2

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