title: In- silico exploration of thirty alphavirus genomes for analysis of the simple sequence repeats.
abstract: The compilation of simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in viruses and its analysis with reference to incidence, distribution and variation would be instrumental in understanding the functional and evolutionary aspects of repeat sequences. Present study encompasses the analysis of SSRs across 30 species of alphaviruses. The full length genome sequences, assessed from NCBI were used for extraction and analysis of repeat sequences using IMEx software. The repeats of different motif sizes (mono- to penta-nucleotide) observed therein exhibited variable incidence across the species. Expectedly, mononucleotide A/T was the most prevalent followed by dinucleotide AG/GA and trinucleotide AAG/GAA in these genomes. The conversion of SSRs to imperfect microsatellite or compound microsatellite (cSSR) is low. cSSR, primarily constituted by variant motifs accounted for up to 12.5% of the SSRs. Interestingly, seven species lacked cSSR in their genomes. However, the SSR and cSSR are predominantly localized to the coding region ORFs for non structural protein and structural proteins. The relative frequencies of different classes of simple and compound microsatellites within and across genomes have been highlighted.
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Patna University, Bihar 800005, India.
authors.forename: Chaudhary Mashhood
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Alam
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, SRCASW, University of Delhi, Vasundhara Enclave, New Delhi 110096, India.
authors.forename: Avadhesh Kumar
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, Patna University, Bihar 800005, India.
authors.forename: Choudhary
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sharfuddin
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, SRCASW, University of Delhi, Vasundhara Enclave, New Delhi 110096, India.
authors.forename: Safdar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ali
keywords: Compound microsatellite; IMEx, Imperfect Microsatellite Extraction; Imperfect Microsatellite Extraction (IMEx); RA, Relative abundance; RD, Relative density; Relative abundance; Relative density; SSR, Simple sequence repeat; Simple sequence repeats (SSR); cSSR, Compound simple sequence repeat