Isolation and characterization of eight polymorphic microsatellite markers for the migratory characiform fish, Salminus brasiliensis

Genomic Resources for Salminus brasiliensis

The Neotropical region bears the most diverse freshwater fish fauna on the planet and is the stage for dramatic conservation struggles. Initiatives aiming for conservation of a single emblematic fish, a flagship species, to which different onlookers relate on a cultural/personal level, holds promise towards engagement and conservation actions benefiting whole biological communities and ecosystems. Here, we present the first comprehensive genomic resources for Salminus brasiliensis, a potential flagship Neotropical species. This fish faces pressing conservation issues, as well as taxonomic uncertainty, being a main species relevant to angling and commercial fisheries. We make available 178 million Illumina paired-end reads, 90 bases long, comprising 16 Gb (≈15X coverage) of filtered data, obtained from a primary genomic library of 500-bp fragments. We present the first de novo genomic assembly for S. brasiliensis, with ∼1 Gb (N₅₀ = 10,889), as well as the coding genome annotation of 12,962 putative genes from assembled genomic fragments over 10 kb, most of which could be identified from the Ostariophysi GenBank database. We also provide a genome-wide panel for more than 80,000 predicted microsatellite loci for low-cost, fast and abundant DNA marker development for this species. A total of 47, among 52 candidates, empirically assayed microsatellites were confirmed as polymorphic in this fish. All genomic data produced for S. brasiliensis is hereby made publicly accessible. With the disclosure of these results, we intend to foster general biology studies and to provide tools to be applied immediately in conservation and aquaculture in this candidate flagship Neotropical species.

Tools for Evolutionary and Genetic Analysis (TEGA): A new platform for the management of molecular and environmental data

Population genetics studies the distributions and changes in population allele frequencies in response to processes, such as mutation, natural selection, gene flow, and genetic drift. Researchers daily manage genetic, biological, and environmental data of the samples, storing them in text files or spreadsheets, which makes it difficult to maintain consistency and traceability. Here we present TEGA, a WEB-based stand-alone software developed for the easy analysis and management of population genetics data. It was designed to: 1) facilitate data management, 2) provide a way to execute the analysis procedures, and 3) supply a means to publish data, procedures, and results. TEGA is distributed under the GNU AGPL v3 license. The documentation, source code, and screenshots are available at https://github.com/darioelias/TEGA. In addition, we present Rabid Fish, the first implementation of TEGA in the Genetics Labortory of the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences at the National University of the Litoral, where research focuses on population genetics studies applied to non-model organisms.

Complete mitochondrial genome of Salminus brasiliensis (Characiformes, Characidae)

We report the complete mitochondrial genome of the fish Salminus brasiliensis, popularly known as dourado. It is a circular, 17,721 bp long DNA molecule, containing 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes and a non-coding Control Region of 2128 bp, a relatively large molecule when compared to other closely related fishes. All protein-coding genes are on the heavy strand, except for Nd6, and all have ATG as the start codon, except for Cox1 gene which has a GTG start codon. Seven protein-coding genes have incomplete stop codons (Nd2, Cox2, Atp6, Nd4, and Cytb have T- -, and Cox3 and Nd3 have TA-). TAG is the stop codon for Nd6 and AGG is the stop codon for Cox1.