Identification and characterization of thirty novel microsatellite DNA markers from the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheirsinensis expressed sequence tags

BACKGROUND: The Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis is an economically important decapod crustacean in China. Despite a widespread distribution and production in China, the resources of E. sinensis have experienced a dramatic decline in the past decades. Here we describe a new set of novel polymorphic microsatellite loci to facilitate the investigation of genetic structure and artificial breeding. RESULTS: In this study, a set of 30 novel polymorphic microsatellite markers for E. sinensis was developed from EST databases. The number of alleles per locus ranged from three to twenty. The observed and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.047 to 0.932 and from 0.047 to 0.935, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: These informative microsatellite markers will be useful in studies of genetics, genomics and marker-assisted selection breeding in E. sinensis.