Inheritance of Its1 Region Microsatellite-Like Repeats in the Noble Crayfish, Astacus Astacus (Decapoda, Astacidea)

We assessed heritability of an ITS1 microsatellite-like repeat pattern in the noble crayfish (Astacus astacus (Linnaeus, 1758)) on 17 families (parents and offspring) by using DNA fragment length analysis (ALFexpress). When the parental fragment length profiles and the profiles of F1 progeny were compared, 15% of the offspring were identical with the female and 36.7% of the offspring were identical with the male, and a total of 99.3% offspring showed parental fragmentation in their fragment length profile. Two out of the 300 offspring (0.7%) showed a fragment length profile with non-parental fragments, possibly because of unequal crossing over or rearrangement. This indicates that ITS1 microsatellite-like repeats were inherited parentally with minor exceptions. Our results show that ITS1 microsatellite-like repeats are parentally inherited and could thus be used to determine population level similarities among crayfish stocks.

Affiliations: 1: Department of Biology, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, FIN-70211 Kuopio, Finland;, Email: anna.alaranta@uef.fi; 2: Department of Biology, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, FIN-70211 Kuopio, Finland, Crayfish Innovation Centre, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, FIN-70211 Kuopio, Finland;, Email: japo.jussila@uef.fi; 3: Department of Biology, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, FIN-70211 Kuopio, Finland;, Email: harri.kokko@uef.fi