Inheritance of Microsatellite Loci and Their Application for Pedigree Analysis of the Polyploid Persian Sturgeon Acipenser persicus (Acipenseridae) Mehdi Moghim 1,2,3, *, Soon Guan Tan 3 , Arash Javanmard 4 , Mohamad Pourkazemi 5 , and Jothi Malar Panandam 6 1 Department of Genetics, Caspian Sea Ecology Research Center, PO Box 961, Sari, Iran 2 Department of Stock Assessment , Caspian Sea Ecology Research Center, PO Box 961, Sari 48471-53948, Iran 3 Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. E-mail:sgtan_98@yahoo.com 4 Department of Genomics, Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII), PO Box 31535-1897, Mahdasht Road, Karaj, Iran. E-mail:Javanmard@abrii.ac.ir 5 Department of Genetics, International Sturgeon Research Institute, PO Box 41635-3464, Rasht, Iran. E-mail:pkazemi_m@yahoo.com 6 Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. E-mail:Jothi@agri.upm.edu.my (Accepted August 16, 2012) Mehdi Moghim, Soon Guan Tan, Arash Javanmard, Mohamad Pourkazemi, and Jothi Malar Panandam (2012) Inheritance of microsatellite loci and their application for pedigree analysis in the polyploid Persian sturgeon Acipenser persicus (Acipenseridae). Zoological Studies 51(8): 1507-1514. Identiication of suitable molecular markers for correctly assigning progenies to their parents particularly during the early stages of development is vital for aquaculture breeding programs. Developing such markers in sturgeons, that have a polyploid ancestry, is particularly challenging because many markers exhibit polysomic inheritance. In the present study, 2 F1 families of 23 and 28 larvae were produced in 1 × 1 crosses of Persian sturgeon. Eleven microsatellite loci were used to genotype the parents and their offspring. An analysis of inheritance patterns demonstrated classical mendelian disomic inheritance in all but 2 of the markers tested in the offspring. Two loci exhibited inheritance patterns consistent with a parental null allele that was consistently inherited by approximately 1/2 of the offspring screened. Thus, the markers tested here can be used for parental assignment testing and for population genetic studies. They can also be used as reliable molecular markers for constructing a genetic linkage map for the target species that will be essential for future quantitative trait locus mapping purposes. This is the 1st report of mendelian segregation testing in Persian sturgeon for cross-species ampliication of single-locus DNA microsatellite markers. http://zoolstud.sinica.edu.tw/Journals/51.8/1507.pdf Key words: Microsatellite loci, Persian sturgeon, Family studies, Mendelian inheritance, Caspian Sea. *To whom correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail:mehdi.moghim@gmail.com; Moghim_m@yahoo.com The Persian sturgeon Acipenser persicus (Acipenseridae) is an economically important species in the southern Caspian region and is the dominant sturgeon species found along most of the Iranian coast of the Caspian Sea (Berg 1948, Holcik 1989, Moghim et al. 2006). As natural reproduction in this species is extremely low, artificial propagation is practiced to rehabilitate wild Persian sturgeon stocks in the Caspian Sea. Consequently, artificial breeding of sturgeons on fish farms currently is the approach practiced to offset decreasing natural supplies of wild sturgeon. Zoological Studies 51(8): 1507-1514 (2012) 1507