Development and validation of SSR markers for the plant-parasitic nematode Subanguina moxae using genome assembly of Illumina pair-end reads

Abstract

Subanguina moxae, belonging to the subfamily Anguininae, is an obligate parasite of Artemisia plants, which are widely used as cooking herbs and in traditional medicine in East Asia. Because the nematode is distributed throughout East Russia and East Asia, there is concern about the potential for significant damage to commercial farming; however, details about its biology remain unclear. To investigate the genetic diversity of S. moxae, we developed 2243 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers using Illumina short reads of the genomic DNA. We validated 100 randomly selected markers indicating their robustness and examined polymorphisms among nematode populations sampled from four different locations in Japan. These SSR markers will be a useful tool for understanding the population structure and transmission patterns of this parasitic nematode.