Development and characterization of EST-SSR markers for Taxus mairei (Taxaceae) and their transferability across species

Taxus is an important genus which is well-known for Taxol. Its genetic analyses were lagged behind those of other conifers due to lack of suitable molecular markers. In this paper, we explored polymorphic loci for Taxus mairei and tested their transferability across species based on 150 EST-SSR loci already developed for Taxus cuspidata previously. The results showed that 103 loci were polymorphic, the number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 11 over 16 individuals. The observed heterozygosity (H_o) and expected heterozygosity (H_e) varied from 0 to 1 and 0.0625 to 0.891, respectively. The PIC values ranged from 0.11 to 0.754 with an average of 0.453. The average cross-species transferability was 96.07% among 5 species. Most of these loci can be used as universal markers in Taxus genus. The PCA results showed these markers have strong power to identify different species. These markers will be useful for further studies on genetic analysis and conversation of Taxus mairei.