Isolation and characterization of 10 polymorphic microsatellites in Meretrix meretrix

Meretrix meretrix is a commercially important bivalve species in China. Due to overfishing for food, the wild stocks are decreasing rapidly. We reported the isolation and characterization of 10 polymorphic loci isolated from apartial genomic DNA library of Meretrix meretrix enriched for CA repeats. A total of 21 primers were designed with online software PRIMER3. We tested variability of these microsatellites on 30 individuals collected in Zhejiang Province. Ten microsatellites were polymorphic. The number of alleles ranged from 2 to 17. The observed heterozygosity was from 0.1667 to 0.9333 and the expected heterozygosity was from 0.1554 to 0.9322. Seven of 10 microsatellites conformed to Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium, and inherited independently. These polymorphic loci provide a valuable tool for assessing population genetic diversity of this species.