title: Removal of microsatellite interruptions by DNA replication slippage: phylogenetic evidence from Drosophila.
abstract: Microsatellites are tandem repetitions of short (1-6 bp) motifs. It is widely assumed that microsatellites degenerate through the accumulation of base substitutions in the repeat array. Using a phylogenetic framework, we studied the evolutionary dynamics of interruptions in three Drosophila microsatellite loci. For all three loci, we show that the interruptions in a microsatellite can be lost, resulting in a longer uninterrupted microsatellite stretch. These results indicate that mutations in the microsatellite array do not necessarily lead to decay but may represent only a transition state during the evolution of a microsatellite. Most likely, this purification of interrupted microsatellites is caused by DNA replication slippage.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Tierzucht und Genetik, Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien, Austria.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Harr
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zangerl
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schlötterer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D004247:DNA; D004261:DNA Replication; D004330:Drosophila / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D004247:DNA