Brief Introduction to Short Tandem Repeats

Microsatellite DNA, also known as short tandem repeats (STR) or simple repeat sequences (SRS or SSR), is widely found in prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes, consisting of a unit of two to thirteen nucleotides repeated hundreds of times in a row on the DNA strand which is about 5% of the eukaryotic genome, the basic unit (core sequence) is 1-6bp. The most common of these is (CA) n and (TG) n, and the human genome has about 5 × 104 ~ 1 × 105 (CA) n