Abstract
Walnuts (
Juglans spp.) are economically important nut and timber species with a worldwide distribution. Using the published Persian walnut genome as a reference for the assembly of short reads from six
Juglans species and several interspecific hybrids, we identified simple sequence repeats in 12
Juglans nuclear and organellar genomes. The genome-wide distribution and polymorphisms of nuclear and organellar microsatellites (SSRs) for most
Juglans genomes have not been previously studied. We compared the frequency of nuclear SSR motifs and their lengths across
Juglans, and identified sectionspecific chloroplast SSR motifs. Primer pairs were designed for more than 60,000 SSR-containing sequences based on alignment against assembled scaffold sequences. Of the >60,000 loci, 39,000 were validated by e-PCR using unique primer pairs. We identified primers containing 100% sequence identity in multiple species. Across species, sequence identity in the SSR-flanking regions was generally low. Although SSRs are common and highly dispersed in the genome, their flanking sequences are conserved at about 90 to 95% identity within
Juglans and within species. In a few rare cases, flanking sequences are identical across species of
Juglans. This comprehensive report of nuclear and organellar SSRs in Juglans and the generation of validated SSR primers will be a useful resource for future genetic analyses, walnut breeding programs, high-level taxonomic evaluations, and genomic studies in
Juglandaceae.
Citation
Ebrahimi, Aziz; Mathur, Samarth; Lawson, Shaneka S.; LaBonte, Nicholas R.; Lorch, Adam; Coggeshall, Mark V.; Woeste, Keith E. 2019. Microsatellite Borders and Micro-sequence Conservation in Juglans. Scientific Reports. 9(1): 3748. 10 p. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-39793-z.