Proceedings of the XLV Italian Society of Agricultural Genetics - SIGA Annual Congress

Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy - 26/29 September, 2001

ISBN 88-900622-1-5

Poster Abstract

TRANSFER OF SSR MARKERS FOR MAPPING IN DIFFERENT FRUIT TREE SPECIES

DONDINI L.*, GENNARI F.*, CHIODINI R.*, TATARANNI G.*, GESSLER C.**, TESTOLIN R.***

* Dipartimento Colture Arboree (DCA-BO), Bologna University, Italy

** Institute of Plant Sciences, ETH Zentrum, Zurich, Switzerland

*** Dipartimento di Produzione Vegetale e Tecnologie Agrarie, Udine, Italy

apple, pear, peach, apricot, SSR markers

Microsatellites indicate short motifs of a few DNA bases that are repeated a variable number of times. In many plant genetic applications they are used as molecular markers because they amplify a single locus, are codominant, highly polymorphic among different cultivars in the same specie and randomly distributed in the genomes.

When SSR flanking regions are well conserved, microsatellites isolated in one species can be transferred to related species and used. Successful transfer of SSR primers among Prunus species (Testolin et al., 2000) and between apple and pear (Yamamoto et al., 2001) has already been demonstrated for fingerprinting purposes. Not detailed information is available about the cross- transferability of SSR in segregation analysis and mapping.

In the present study mapping apple- and peach-specific SSRs in pear and apricot seedling populations is reported. Two main indications emerged: (i) transfer of SSR primer is possible but the degree of polymorphisms is lower than that found in the species in which they were isolated and (ii) when the polymorphism is still present, SSRs can represent a powerful tool in evincing synteny between different genomes. As reported by Yamamoto et al. (2001), some PCR products amplified with transferred primers do not identify a SSR region. These results suggest a possible different use of SSR-transferred primers for fingerprinting and mapping purposes.