The dynamics of microsatellite, or short tandem repeats (STRs), is well documented for long, polymorphic loci, but much less is known for shorter ones. For example, the issue of a minimum threshold length for DNA slippage remains contentious. Model-fitting methods have generally concluded that slippage only occurs over a threshold length of about eight nucleotides, in contradiction with some di...

Maintenance of genomic integrity is essential for cell survival, and genomic instability is a commonly recognized intrinsic property of all cancers. Microsatellite instability (MSI) represents a frequently occurring and easily traceable simple form of sequence variation, signified by the contraction or expansion of specific DNA sequences containing short tandem repeats. MSI is frequently detect...

Restriction fragment length polymorphism and DNA sequence analysis discern two main types of Cryptosporidium parvum. We present a survey of length polymorphism at several microsatellite loci for type 1 and type 2 isolates. A total of 14 microsatellite loci were identified from C. parvum DNA sequences deposited in public databases. All repeats were mono-, di-, and trinucleotide repeats of A, AT,...

Repetitive sequences are biologically and clinically important because they can influence traits and disease, but repeats are challenging to analyse using short-read sequencing technology. We present a tool for genotyping microsatellite repeats called RepeatSeq, which uses Bayesian model selection guided by an empirically derived error model that incorporates sequence and read properties. Next,...

Microsatellites or simple sequence repeats provide an attractive source of genetic polymorphisms for both mammals and plants (1). Microsatellites can be detected by PCR using minute amounts of starting material and they provide codominant markers with a high degree of allelic polymorphism. However, these markers are obtained through a difficult and labor-intensive procedure. In contrast, RAPD m...

To address whether there are differences of variation among repeat motif types and among taxonomic groups, we present here an analysis of variation and correlation of dinucleotide microsatellite repeats in eukaryotic genomes. Ten taxonomic groups were compared, those being primates, mammalia (excluding primates and rodentia), rodentia, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles, insects, molluscs, pl...

Title: Frameshift mutations in coding repeats of protein tyrosine phosphatase genes in colorectal tumors with microsatellite instability Author's response to reviews: Dear sirs, the requested formatting changes are done. Concerning reference #44 (Yamamoto et al., 2000): this is the only reference showing the PubMed ID. We cannot find any reason for that formatting.

Within recent years, microsatellite have become one of the most powerful genetic markers in biology. For several mammalian species, microsatellite mutation rates have been estimated on the order of 10(-3)-10(-5). A recent study, however, demonstrated mutation rates in Drosophila melanogaster of at least one order of magnitude lower than those in mammals. To further test this result, we examined...

Other comments: Chromosomal location is unknown for the nine markers. The loci containing imperfect repeats (namely Sat4, Sat5 and Sat8) showed the greatest variability in allele size. Mutations leading to such differences in number of repeats probably involve processes other than mispairing slippage, which generates convergent mutations less frequently. Differences in allele size of Nine polym...