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.