title: Microsatellite instability in yeast: dependence on the length of the microsatellite.
abstract: One of the most common microsatellites in eukaryotes consists of tandem arrays [usually 15-50 base pairs (bp) in length] of the dinucleotide GT. We examined the rates of instability for poly GT tracts of 15, 33, 51, 99 and 105 bp in wild-type and mismatch repair-deficient strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Rates of instability increased more than two orders of magnitude as tracts increased in size from 15 to 99 bp in both wild-type and msh2 strains. The types of alterations observed in long and short tracts in wild-type strains were different in two ways. First, tracts > or = 51 bp had significantly more large deletions than tracts < or = 33 bp. Second, for the 99- and 105-bp tracts, almost all events involving single repeats were additions; for the smaller tracts, both additions and deletions of single repeats were common.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 27599-3280, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wierdl
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dominska
authors.forename: T D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Petes
mesh_terms: D004271:DNA, Fungal; D018900:Dinucleotide Repeats; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D004271:DNA, Fungal