Research article

A microsatellite linkage map of Drosophila mojavensis

Regina Staten^1,2 , Sheri Dixon Schully¹ and Mohamed AF Noor¹

¹  Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA

²  Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70808 USA

author email corresponding author email

BMC Genetics 2004, 5:12doi:10.1186/1471-2156-5-12

Published:	26 May 2004

Abstract

Background

Drosophila mojavensis has been a model system for genetic studies of ecological adaptation and speciation. However, despite its use for over half a century, no linkage map has been produced for this species or its close relatives.

Results

We have developed and mapped 90 microsatellites in D. mojavensis, and we present a detailed recombinational linkage map of 34 of these microsatellites. A slight excess of repetitive sequence was observed on the X-chromosome relative to the autosomes, and the linkage groups have a greater recombinational length than the homologous D. melanogaster chromosome arms. We also confirmed the conservation of Muller's elements in 23 sequences between D. melanogaster and D. mojavensis.

Conclusions

The microsatellite primer sequences and localizations are presented here and made available to the public. This map will facilitate future quantitative trait locus mapping studies of phenotypes involved in adaptation or reproductive isolation using this species.