Isolation and characterization of 91 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers for the blue swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus)

The blue swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus) is one of most important crab fishery resources in China. In this study, we first isolated and characterized a set of 91 SNP loci in P. pelagicus. A total of 8426 bp long high quality DNA sequences were obtained, from which 91 SNP loci were identified and well genotyped. The average frequency of SNP loci was one locus every 93 base pairs in P. pelagicus genome. Of these 91 SNP loci, each had bi-alleles with the minor allele frequency ranging from 0.0167 to 0.5000. The observed heterozygosity per locus ranged from 0.0333 to 1.0000, while the expected heterozygosity per locus was from 0.0333 to 0.5085. Forty-four loci showed significant deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The SNP markers developed herein will be helpful for elucidating population genetic diversity, population dynamics, and conservation genetics of P. pelagicus and other related crab species.