What do microsatellites tell us?
A genetic marker can be used to locate a specific segment of genetic material that has a known location on a chromosome. Microsatellite markers are one example of the many types of genetic markers available to measure genetic variation.
What is a microsatellite region?
A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organism’s genome.
What are the advantages of microsatellite?
Microsatellite markers had the advantages of being more informative, with many allelic variants and a higher frequency of heterozygosity in the population, and of being simple to genotype.
Why do we use microsatellites?
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).
Why microsatellites are used in forensic analysis?
The microsatellites in use today for forensic analysis are all tetra- or penta-nucleotide repeats, as these give a high degree of error-free data while being short enough to survive degradation in non-ideal conditions.
Which is the best definition of a microsatellite?
Definition of microsatellite : any of numerous short segments of DNA that are distributed throughout the genome, that consist of repeated sequences of usually two to five nucleotides, and that tend to vary from one individual to another
Why are microsatellites important to plant geneticists?
They have a higher mutation rate than other areas of DNA leading to high genetic diversity. Microsatellites are often referred to as short tandem repeats ( STRs) by forensic geneticists and in genetic genealogy, or as simple sequence repeats ( SSRs) by plant geneticists. A microsatellite database can be accessed https://data.ccmb.res.in/msdb/
What’s the difference between microsatellite and DNA motif?
Minisatellite is a repeating sequence of 10-100 base pairs in the genome. Here, the repeating unit is somewhat large and it is called a DNA motif. Another name for minisatellite is variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs). The number of VNTRs is highly variable among individuals.
What kind of repeating sequence is a microsatellite?
A microsatellite is a repeating sequence of 2-6 base pairs in the genome. Since it is a type of tandem repeats with short sequences of nucleotides, microsatellites are also known as short tandem repeats (STRs).