Isolation and Characterization of Microsatellite Markers for Stenotaphrum Trin. Using 454 Sequencing Technology

Abstract

St. augustinegrass (Stenotaphrum sp.) is a warm-season perennial turfgrass that grows widely in tropical regions around the world. St. augustinegrass is valued for both its turf performance and high levels of resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. The current study was aimed at developing nuclear microsatellite markers for st. augustinegrass. Pyrosequencing of an enriched microsatellite library on the Roche FLX platform using a 454 Titanium kit produced 57,306 sequence reads; 2614 of which contained short tandem repeats. One hundred primer pairs were tested with 18 accessions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Plant Germplasm System st. augustinegrass collection grown in Griffin, GA. This collection contains both Stenotaphrum dimidiatum and Stenotaphrum secundatum accessions. Among revealed 100 primer pairs, 33 were polymorphic. A total of 175 alleles were amplified. The number of observed alleles per primer pair ranged from two to 10, with an average of 5.3. Shannon’s information index and Nei’s genetic diversity values were 0.4403 and 0.2873, respectively. This set of microsatellite markers is useful for assessment of genetic diversity and construction of molecular genetic linkage maps in st. augustinegrass.