title: Plasmodium vivax genetic diversity: microsatellite length matters.
abstract: The Plasmodium vivax genome is very diverse but has a relatively low abundance of microsatellites. Leclerc et al. had shown that these di-nucleotide repeats have a low level of polymorphism, suggesting a recent bottleneck event in the evolutionary history of P. vivax. By contrast, in a recent paper, Imwong et al. show that there is a very high level of microsatellite diversity. The difference in these results is probably due to the set array lengths chosen by each group. Longer arrays are more diverse than are shorter ones because slippage mutations become exponentially more common with an increase in array length. These studies highlight the need to consider carefully the application and design of studies involving microsatellites.
authors.affiliation: International Health Program, Infectious Diseases Division, Menzies School of Health Research and Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Northern Territory 0811, Australia. bruce.russell@cdu.edu.au
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Russell
authors.forename: Rossarin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Suwanarusk
authors.forename: Usa
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Lek-Uthai
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016054:DNA, Protozoan / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D014644:Genetic Variation; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D010966:Plasmodium vivax / Q000235:genetics*; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid
chemical_list: D016054:DNA, Protozoan