Development of SNP markers and validation 31 SNPs in Coilia nasus

Estuarine tapertail anchovy (Coilia nasus) is a widely distributed and commercially important aquaculture species. However, excessive fishing and changes in aquatic ecology have almost caused extinction of the species in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Therefore, it is very urgent to perform genetic research on C. nasus to protect the wild population. In this study, we sequenced the liver transcriptome of C. nasus using Illumina Hiseq 2500 platform. We obtained 65,129 unigenes with an average length of 606 bp and a total of 62,947 putative SNPs were detected. Among them, 31 SNPs were selected for the validation experiments. All of the 31 loci were found to be polymorphic and showed bi-allelic in 58 individuals of C. nasus. These SNP markers should not only be useful for population conservation, but also for construction of genetic linkage map and economic performance improvement of C. nasus.