Priliminary guidline for students

2. Repetitive heterogeneous classes of 2-6bp
repeat motif length, present in the coding and
noncoding region of DNA and exhibiting
length polymorphism are defined as
microsatellites.

3. Microsatellites are simple sequence
tandem repeats (SSTRs).
They are located either within or between
genes.
They are highly polymorphic sequences.
They have flanking regions on each side
consisting of unordered DNA.

4.  They are evenly distributed through out the genome
 They show large polymorphism due to variation in the number
of repeat units.
 Their flanking regions can be used to develop locus-specific
primers for amplifying there loci.

7.  They are abundant, and multiallelic molecular marker
 Display high level of genetic variation.
 Very minute amount of DNA is required
 Analysis can be easily performed by PCR
 These type of analysis can be shared among different
laboratories by exchanging PCR primers, even same
primers can be used for analysis in different genomes.

8. Costly and time consuming
Specific oligonucleotides are required
Polymorphic primer sites have to be
established
Requirement of cloning and sequencing of
microsatellite loci
Rarely useful for higher-level systematics.
That is because the mutation rate is too high.

9. Conservation
biology
Forensics
Diagnosis and
identification of
human diseases
 Detection of sudden
changes in population
 Population
interaction
 Identification of new
and early populations
 Microsatellites are
predominant genetic
markers
 It can be used to
identify criminals and
for paternity testing by
performing DNA
fingerprinting.
 Useful markers for
early cancer detection
 Useful in linkage
studies which help to
locate genes
responsible for various
genetic disorders.

10.  In a population, many alleles of a single
microsatellite locus may exist.
 Microsatellites mutate 100 to 10,000 time as fast as
base pair substitutions, thus is useful for studying
evolution in short time spans.
 microsatellites are distributed over the euchromatic
part of the genome, but are underrepresented in
heterochromatin. This property has greatly facilitated
their use in genome mapping
 In mammals,the most abundant dinucleotide
microsatellite is (GT/CA)n, In Caenorhabditis elegans