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Silene tatarica microsatellites are frequently located in repetitive DNA
Author(s) -
TERO N.,
NEUMEIER H.,
GUDAVALLI R.,
SCHLÖTTERER C.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of evolutionary biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.289
H-Index - 128
eISSN - 1420-9101
pISSN - 1010-061X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2006.01118.x
Subject(s) - microsatellite , biology , genetics , repeated sequence , dna , trinucleotide repeat expansion , dna sequencing , evolutionary biology , genome , gene , allele
The genomic distribution of microsatellites can be explained by DNA slippage, slippage like processes and base substitutions. Nevertheless, microsatellites are also frequently associated with repetitive DNA, raising the question of the relative contributions of these processes to microsatellite genesis. We show that in Silene tatarica about 50% of the microsatellites isolated by an enrichment cloning protocol are associated with repetitive DNA. Based on the flanking sequences, we distinguished seven different classes of repetitive DNA. PCR primers designed for the flanking sequences of an individual clone amplified a heterogeneous family of repetitive DNA. Despite considerable variation in the flanking sequence ( π = 0.108), the microsatellite repeats did not show any evidence for decay. Rather, we observed the emergence of a new repeat type that probably arose by mutation and was spread by replication slippage. In fact, a complete repeat type switch could be observed among the analysed clones. We propose that the analysis of microsatellite sequences embedded in repetitive DNA provides a hitherto largely unexplored tool to study microsatellite evolution.