title: Microsatellite analysis in the genome of Acanthaceae: An in silico approach.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Acanthaceae is one of the advanced and specialized families with conventionally used medicinal plants. Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) play a major role as molecular markers for genome analysis and plant breeding. The microsatellites existing in the complete genome sequences would help to attain a direct role in the genome organization, recombination, gene regulation, quantitative genetic variation, and evolution of genes.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The current study reports the frequency of microsatellites and appropriate markers for the Acanthaceae family genome sequences.
  
  
  METHODS
  The whole nucleotide sequences of Acanthaceae species were obtained from National Center for Biotechnology Information database and screened for the presence of SSRs. SSR Locator tool was used to predict the microsatellites and inbuilt Primer3 module was used for primer designing.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Totally 110 repeats from 108 sequences of Acanthaceae family plant genomes were identified, and the occurrence of dinucleotide repeats was found to be abundant in the genome sequences. The essential amino acid isoleucine was found rich in all the sequences. We also designed the SSR-based primers/markers for 59 sequences of this family that contains microsatellite repeats in their genome.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The identified microsatellites and primers might be useful for breeding and genetic studies of plants that belong to Acanthaceae family in the future.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Centre for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
authors.forename: Priyadharsini
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kaliswamy
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Centre for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
authors.forename: Srividhya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vellingiri
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Centre for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
authors.forename: Bharathi
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Nathan
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Centre for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
authors.forename: Saravanakumar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Selvaraj
keywords: Acanthaceae; microsatellites; molecular markers