Development of SSR Markers for Douglas Fir and Western Hemlock, 1997 Biological Sciences Symposium Proceedings

Simple sequence repeats have emerged as the current genetic marker of choice due to their co-dominant, multiallelic, highly polymorphic nature and reproducibility. Therefore as the initial component in a program designed to produce genetic markers for selection of economically important quantitative traits in Douglas-fir and western hemlock we have undertaken an intensive effort to characterize a large number of SSR loci. Hybridization of all 47 possible di, tri and tetra nucleotide SSRs against eight economically important conifer species including the two species of interest revealed AG and ATG motifs to be the most abundant in most of the conifer species studied. Thus far we have developed 95 primer pairs for Douglas-fir and western hemlock and have sequence characterized another 400 SSR containing clones. Most of our primer pairs amplified a product of expected size range. Amplified products were verified by sequence characterization and Southern hybridization.