Cucurbits (Cucurbitaceae) include major horticultural crops with high nutritional and economic value that also serve as model plants for studying plant development crop improvement. Conventional breeding methods have made important contributions to the production of cucurbit but led a bottleneck because narrow genetic bases low variation rates these crops. With molecular techniques, innovations...

Although many research papers have studied diversity and differentiation within livestock species, genetic relationships among neighboring populations remain poorly understood. Here we apply recent methodologies to analyze the polymorphism of 14 microsatellites in 238 unrelated individuals belonging to six sheep breeds from Northern Spain to ascertain their historical relationships and the rela...

Microsatellite loci were identified from Cornus kousa'National'. Primer pairs for 86 loci were developed and of these, eight were optimized and screened using genomic DNA from 22 kousa cultivars. All optimized loci were polymorphic and the number of alleles per locus ranged from three to 17. Observed heterozygosity ranged from 0 to 0.3 and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.38 to 0.91. These...

Mating systems play a central role in determining population genetic structure and the methods to be used to develop new cultivars and preserve the variability of a crop. A Brassica napus crop called nabicol is grown in northwestern Spain. Knowledge on its mating system is needed in order to manage the germplasm correctly and design breeding strategies. The aims of this work were to study the m...

Inclusive fitness benefits have been suggested to be a major selective force behind the evolution of cooperative breeding. We investigated the fitness benefits selecting for cooperative breeding in the Seychelles warbler, Acrocephalus sechellensis. A microsatellite-based genotyping method was used to determine the relatedness of subordinates to group offspring in an isolated population of Seych...

The objective of this study was to determine the intra- and intergenetic diversities of eight different goat populations in Turkey including Hair, Angora, Kilis, Yayladag, Shami, Honamli, Saanen, and Alpine. A total of 244 DNA samples were genotyped using 11 microsatellites loci. The genetic differentiation between breeds was considerable as a result of the statistically significant (P < 0.001)...

An enduring problem in avian ecology and conservation is linking breeding and wintering grounds of migratory species. As migratory species and populations vary in the degree to which individuals from distinct breeding locales mix on stop-over sites and wintering grounds, establishing migratory connectivity informs our understanding of population demography and species management. We present a n...

Although gerbils have been widely used in many areas of biological research over many years, there is currently no effective genetic quality control system available. In the present study, we sought to establish a microsatellite marker system for quality control and conducted an optimized analysis of 137 microsatellite loci in two laboratory gerbil populations and one wild population. Independe...

Modern maize breeding programs gave rise to genetically uniform varieties that can affect maize's capacity to cope with increasing climate unpredictability. Maize populations, genetically more heterogeneous, can evolve and better adapt to a broader range of edaphic-climatic conditions. These populations usually suffer from low yields; it is therefore desirable to improve their agronomic perform...

Using an (AG)13 enriched genomic library of Mugil cephalus, 12 polymorphic microsatellite loci were isolated and characterized in a test population; the number of alleles ranged from 2 to 11. The observed and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.2593 to 0.8966 and from 0.3047 to 0.8454, respectively. Two loci deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium; linkage disequilibrium among the 12 loci ...