Microsatellites--tandem repeats of short DNA motifs--are abundant in the human genome and have high mutation rates. While microsatellite instability is implicated in numerous genetic diseases, the molecular processes involved in their emergence and disappearance are still not well understood. Microsatellites are hypothesized to follow a life cycle, wherein they are born and expand into adulthoo...

The sequencing and comparison of vertebrate genomes have enabled the identification of widely conserved genomic elements. Chief among these are genes and cis-regulatory regions, which are often under selective constraints that promote their retention in related organisms. The conservation of elements that either lack function or whose functions are yet to be ascribed has been relatively little ...

Mutations that provide environment-dependent selective advantages drive adaptive divergence among species. Many phenotypic differences related species are more likely to result from gene expression rather than non-synonymous mutations. In this regard, cis-regulatory mutations play an important part in generating functionally significant variation. Some proposed mechanisms explore the role of in...

Understanding how microsatellites are distributed in eukaryotic genomes is important to clarify the differential abundance of these repeats under an evolutionary scenario. We have concatenated data from 3165 DNA sequences of 326 Bivalvia species to search for taxonomic patterns of microsatellite distribution in genomic regions of markedly different functionality. Some microsatellite motifs in b...

Nine nuclear-encoded microsatellites from an enriched genomic DNA library of the HAB (harmful algal bloom) dinoflagellate Karenia brevis were isolated and characterized. The microsatellites include five perfect (three dinucleotide and two trinucleotide) and four imperfect (two dinucleotide and two trinucleotide) repeat motifs. Gene (haplotype) diversity ranged from 0.153 to 0.750 among a sample...

The taxonomic status of Pinus henryi, a rare species endemic to China, is still ambiguous. In this study, the genetic relationships among P. henryi and its congeners (P. tabulaeformis, P. tabulaeformis var. mukdensis, and P. massoniana) were revealed using multiplexed microsatellite markers, including chloroplast microsatellites, nuclear microsatellites, and expressed sequence tag microsatellit...

Several intragenically linked microsatellites have been identified in the floral regulatory genes A. sandwicense APETALA1 (ASAP1) and A. sandwicense APETALA3/TM6 (ASAP3/TM6) in 17 species of the Hawaiian and North American Madiinae (Asteraceae). Thirty-nine microsatellite loci were observed in the introns of these two genes, suggesting that they are hotspots for microsatellite formation. The se...

The herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) genome is a linear double-stranded DNA of 152 kpb. It is divided into long and short regions of unique sequences termed U(L) and U(S), respectively, and these are flanked by regions of inverted internal and terminal repeats. Microsatellites are short tandem repeats of 1- to 6-nucleotide motifs; they are often highly variable and polymorphic within the gen...

Despite recent advances in high-throughput sequencing, difficulties are often encountered when developing microsatellites for species with large and complex genomes. This probably reflects the close association in many species of microsatellites with cryptic repetitive elements. We therefore developed a novel approach for isolating polymorphic microsatellites from the club-legged grasshopper (G...