Transferability of Sorghum Genic Microsatellite Markers to Peanut

Abstract

Currently development of new marker types has shifted from anonymous DNA fragments to gene-based markers. Sim-ple Sequence Repeats (SSRs) are useful DNA markers in plant genetic research including in peanut. However, de novo development of SSRs is expensive and time consuming. Gene-based DNA markers are transferable among related spe-cies owing to the conserved nature of genes. In this study transferability of sorghum EST-SSR (SbEST-SSR) markers to peanut was prospected. A set of 411 SbEST-SSR primer pairs were used to amplify peanut genomic DNA extracted from cultivated peanut where 39% of them successfully amplified. A comparison of amplification patterns between sorghum and peanut showed similar banding pattern with majority of transferable SbEST-SSRs. Among these transfer-able SSR markers, 14% have detected polymorphism among 4 resistant and 4 susceptible peanut lines for rust and late leaf spot diseases. These transferable markers will benefit peanut genome research by not only providing additional DNA markers for population genetic analyses, but also allowing comparative mapping to be possible between peanut and sorghum—a possible monocot-dicot comparison.