Development of EST-SSR markers for Taxus cuspidata from publicly available transcriptome sequences

• Eighty novel polymorphic microsatellite markers for Taxus cuspidata were developed.
• These loci were characterized for polymorphisms with 18 individuals of the species.
• Markers will be useful for the analysis of genetic diversity.

Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) from a public database were surveyed to identify potential EST-SSR markers for Taxus cuspidata. A total of 5.4 gigabase pairs of RNA-sequencing data were downloaded and assembled into 179,687 contigs, 7404 (4.1%) of which contained SSR sequences. One hundred and fifty PCR primer pairs were designed for SSRs with repeat numbers ≥9 and screened for variation in 18 T. cuspidata trees. Eighty markers showed length variation, with numbers of alleles and expected heterozygosity ranging from 2 to 11 and 0.056 to 0.907, respectively. These EST-SSR markers are expected to be useful for studying the genetic diversity and conservation of Taxus genetic resources.