Isolation and characterization of 47 SNP markers in the critically endangered Acipenser dabryanus

Acipenser dabryanus is an endemic species to the Yangtze River system. Due to anthropogenic impacts, the natural population of A. dabryanus has decreased dramatically in recent years and it has been listed as critically endangered species in the IUCN Red Data Book. However, insufficient molecular markers have limited the effective conservation and management of this species. In the present study, 47 novel single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers were developed based on transcriptome sequencing. The minor allele frequency ranged from 0.191 to 0.485, and the observed and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.059 to 0.941 and 0.058 to 0.507, respectively. Polymorphic information content ranged from 0.055 to 0.375. Among these SNPs, seven loci showed significant departures from the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (p < 0.05). The novel polymorphic SNPs will be helpful for the future study on population structure and conservation genetics for this species.