Background: Pearl oyster
Pinctada fucata martensii
is cultured for producing round nucleated pearls. Pearl
production involves a surgical operation where a mantle tissue graft from a donor oyster and a round nucleus
are implanted in the gonad of a host oyster. Whether the mantle graft implanted in the gonad of a host oyster
contributes to the formation of a pearl sac that secretes pearl nacre to form a pearl should be determined. In
April 2012, two full-sib families were separately used as donor and host oysters for a nucleus insertion
operation. The pearl sac was sampled from the host oysters at day 60 after nucleus operation. A large number of
simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were developed using Illumina HiSeq
™ 2000 platform. The two full-sib
families were also used to mine diagnostic SSR markers for genotyping donor oyster, host oyster, and pearl sac.
Results: A total of 3168 microsatellite lociwere identified in 39,078 unigenes, and 1977 SSR primerswere designed
by Primer 3.0. Forty-seven SSR primers were validated, and the rate of successful amplification was 72.3%. Two
diagnostic SSR primers could successfully genotype pearl sac, donor oyster, and host oyster. Donor and host
oysters were both homogenous, and the alleles in pearl sac were identical to those in donor and host oysters.
Conclusions: The present results confirmed that themantle graft implanted in the gonad of host oyster contributed
to the formation of the pearl sac in pearl oyster
P. fucata martensii.