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Although the foxtail millet [ Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv.] is recently regarded as a model crop for studying functional genomics of biofuel grasses, its genetic improvement to some extent was limited due to the non-availability of molecular markers, particularly the microsatellite markers and the saturated genetic linkage map. Considering this, we attempted to generate a significant number of microsatellite markers in cultivar 'Prasad'. Two hundred and fifty-six clones were sequenced to generate 41.82-kb high-quality sequences retrieved from genomic library enriched with dinucleotide repeat motifs. Microsatellites were identified in 194 (76%) of the 256 positive clones, and 64 primer pairs (pp) were successfully designed from 95 (49%) unique SSR-containing clones. The 67.4% primer designing ability, 100% PCR amplification efficiency and 45.3% polymorphic potential in the parents of F2 mapping population established the efficacy of genomic microsatellites. All the 64 microsatellite markers displayed high level of cross-species amplification (~67%) in 10 millets and non-millets species. These experimental findings suggest the utility and efficacy of SSRs in diverse genotyping applications, resolving QTLs, phylogenetic relationships and transferability in several important grass species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introns are noncoding sequences in a gene that are transcribed to precursor mRNA but spliced out during mRNA maturation and are abundant in eukaryotic genomes. The availability of codominant molecular markers and saturated genetic linkage maps have been limited in foxtail millet ( Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv.). Here, we describe the development of 98 novel intron length polymorphic (ILP) markers in foxtail millet using sequence information of the model plant rice. A total of 575 nonredundant expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences were obtained, of which 327 and 248 unique sequences were from dehydration- and salinity-stressed suppression subtractive hybridization libraries, respectively. The BLAST analysis of 98 EST sequences suggests a nearly defined function for about 64% of them, and they were grouped into 11 different functional categories. All 98 ILP primer pairs showed a high level of cross-species amplification in two millets and two nonmillets species ranging from 90% to 100%, with a mean of ∼97%. The mean observed heterozygosity and Nei's average gene diversity 0.016 and 0.171, respectively, established the efficiency of the ILP markers for distinguishing the foxtail millet accessions. Based on 26 ILP markers, a reasonable dendrogram of 45 foxtail millet accessions was constructed, demonstrating the utility of ILP markers in germplasm characterizations and genomic relationships in millets and nonmillets species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]