Development and characterization of 13 polymorphic microsatellite markers for the Chinese surf clam (Mactra chinensis) through Illumina paired-end sequencing

Chinese surf clam (Mactra chinensis) is a commercially important bivalve in China. The high-throughout transcriptome sequencing of M. chinensis provided a valuable resource for mining large number of microsatellite markers. In this study, we developed and characterized 13 novel polymorphic microsatellite markers for M. chinensis. The number of alleles varied from 4 to 7, with an average of 5.2 per locus. The observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.1667 to 0.7368 and 0.6434 to 0.8056, respectively. Two loci significantly deviated from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium after Bonferroni correction. These novel informative microsatellite markers will be useful for further genetic diversity analysis, linkage mapping, evolutionary studies and marker-assisted breeding.