Detecting genotyping errors at Schistosoma japonicum microsatellites with pedigree information

Background: schistosomiasis japonica remains a major public health problem in china. integrating molecular analyses,such as population genetic analyses,of the parasite into the on-going surveillance programs is helpful in exploring the factors causing the persistence and/or spread of schistosoma japonicum. however,genotyping errors can seriously affect the results of such studies,unless accounted for in the analyses. methods: we assessed the genotyping errors (missing alleles or false alleles) of seven s. japonicum microsatellites,using a pedigree data approach for schistosome miracidia,which were stored on whatman fta cards. results: among 107 schistosome miracidia successfully genotyped,resulting in a total of 715 loci calls,a total of 31 genotyping errors were observed with 25.2 % of the miracidia having at least one error. the error rate per locus differed among loci,which ranged from 0 to 9.8 %,with the mean error rate 4.3 % over loci. with the parentage analysis software cervus,the assignment power with these seven markers was estimated to be 89.5 % for one parent and 99.9 % for a parent pair. one locus was inferred to have a high number of null alleles and a second with a high mistyping rate. conclusion: to the authors' knowledge,this is the first time that s. japonicum pedigrees have been used in an assessment of genotyping errors of microsatellite markers. the observed locus-specific error rate will benefit downstream epidemiological or ecological analyses of s. japonicum with the markers. © 2015 gao et al.