Modulation of Gene Expression by Microsatellites in Microbes

Abstract Microsatellites are tandem repeats (TRs) of 1–6 bp and are also known as simple sequence repeats (SSRs). Microsatellites are TRs of base pairs that are widely spread throughout the genome. Microsatellites are located in the coding and noncoding regions. Microsatellite markers are codominant, abundant, and multiallelic and play an important role in the study of molecular population genetics, positional cloning, QTL mapping, disease identification, pathogenesis, and evolutionary studies, etc. Here we have discussed the origin and types of microsatellites, their genomic distribution, and their functional significance in the microbial genome.