How do microsatellites evolve?

How do microsatellites evolve?

One model of microsatellite evolution posits that stationary length distributions arise from a balance between length mutations, which tend to promote repeat growth, and point mutations, which tend to break long repeat arrays into smaller units.

How do microsatellites tend to mutate?

It is accepted that the most common mutational mechanism affecting microsatellites is replication slippage, a process involving a gain or contraction of one or more repeat units [5,6]. Other microsatellite mutations might be caused by unequal crossing over, nucleotide substitutions, or duplication events [7].

What are microsatellites used for in genetics?

Microsatellites are used for assessing chromosomal DNA deletions in cancer diagnosis. Microsatellites are widely used for DNA profiling, also known as “genetic fingerprinting”, of crime stains (in forensics) and of tissues (in transplant patients).

Are microsatellites inherited?

By contrast, PCR-amplified sequence-tagged microsatellite sites (STMS) are codominantly inherited, and often detect numerous alleles at each individual locus.

How can microsatellites be used for DNA genotyping?

Microsatellites or STRs are repetitive co-dominant sequences of 2–6 bp of DNA that are present throughout the entire genome. They are often used for identification or fingerprinting of DNA. Microsatellites are amplified by PCR using fluorescently labeled primers and the amplicons are separated using CE.

Why do scientists use microsatellites now?

These agents are widely used for forensic identification and relatedness testing, and are predominant genetic markers in this area of application. The application of microsatellites is an extending web and covers the varied scenarios of science, such as, conservation biology, plant genetics, and population studies.

What is the difference between the microsatellite DNA sequence and minisatellite DNA sequence?

The main difference between microsatellite and minisatellite is that the repeating unit of a microsatellite consists of 2-6 base pairs while the repeating unit of a minisatellite consists of 10-100 base pairs.

What are microsatellites and how do they differ from SNPs?

Microsatellite polymorphisms can arise through replication slippage, unequal crossing over, or mutations extending or interrupting a series of repeats, whereas SNPs arise via point mutations. As a result, new microsatellite variations arise more frequently than new SNP variations.

Why microsatellite DNA is a good marker of genetic variation?

The major advantages of microsatellite markers are codominant transmission (the heterozygotes can be distinguished from homozygotes), locus-specific in nature, highly polymorphic and hypervariable, high information content and providing considerable pattern, relative abundance with uniform genome coverage, higher …

What does microsatellite data tell us?

Microsatellites provide data suitable for phylogeographic studies that seek to explain the concordant biogeographic and genetic histories of the floras and faunas of large-scale regions. They are also useful for fine-scale phylogenies — up to the level of closely related species.

Why are SNPs better than microsatellites?

SNPs are more abundant than microsatellites and are also dispersed equally throughout the genome, but they are less informative than microsatellites, because they are only diallelic. Thus, a considerably larger number of SNP markers are required to achieve an information content similar to that of microsatellites.

What is microsatellite and minisatellite?

Microsatellite refers to a set of short repeated DNA sequences at a particular locus on a chromosome, which varies in number in different individuals and so can be used for genetic fingerprinting while minisatellite refers to a form of polymorphic DNA, comprising a variable number of tandem repeats, with repeat units …

Why are microsatellites more polymorphic than SNPs?

A microsatellite locus can have multiple alleles, while a single SNP locus usually has only two alleles. Therefore, the polymorphism of a single microsatellite marker was higher than that of a SNP marker.

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