Microsatellite Variation in Russian Sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) from Aquaculture

Abstract

Most sturgeon species today are on the brink of extinction because of anthropogenic influences, but in the same time, the economical interest regarding these species was constantly increasing, especially because the great value of the roe. In order to satisfy the increasingly high-demand sturgeon farms began developing in the last decades and are nowadays the main producers of caviar and other sturgeon products. Due their characteristics (high polymorphism, high power of discrimination, codominant Mendelian inheritance), microsatellites prove themselves very usefull in population genetics studies. In our study we analyzed the cross-amplification and the polymorphism of seven microsatellite loci (LS-19, LS-54, LS-57, LS-68, Aox9, Aox23, and Aox45) in Acipenser gueldenstaedtii population from aquaculture. The microsatellite markers were originally designed for the American lake sturgeon, Acipenser fulvescens and Atlantic sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus. We successfully amplified all microsatellite loci obtaining allele peaks of different sizes which were analyzed by capilary electrophoresis. The number of allele ranged beetwen 4 (Aox23) and 12 (LS-54). This technology has great potential for investigating the genetic diversity of the wild sturgeons’ population and, also, might be extended to aquaculture studies aiming the monitoring of genetic variation in comercial breeding programs.

Keywords

• acipenser gueldenstaedtii
• aquaculture
• genetic diversity
• microsatellites