MICROSATELITTE DNA VARIATION IN THE BLACK SEA STELLATE STURGEON, ACIPENSER STELLATUS

Abstract

Marine migratory sturgeons represent one of the most important fishery resources, both from a scientific and commercial point of view. Anthropogenic influence and other factors caused the dramatically decrease of sturgeon stocks in Romania. This required the development of conservation programs and genetic studies to distinguish different populations. New molecular biology developments allowed the use of new efficient markers in the genetics of sturgeons. Thus, microsatellite markers allow the evaluation of intraspecific genetic diversity and offer us the possibility to distinguish differences between populations due to their high level of allelic variation. In our study we evaluated the genetic diversity in stellate sturgeons, Acipenser stellatus, from the Black Sea, using microsatellite markers. We selected a set of seven microsatellite loci that are amplified by multiplex PCR reaction in order to estimate the differences between individuals of Acipenser stellatus, due to their high allelic variation. High level of polymorphism was observed for the population of sturgeons studied.

Keywords

• sturgeon
• microsatellite
• genetic characterization
• allelic variation