Patterns of size homoplasy at 10 microsatellite loci in pumas (Puma concolor)

摘要

Microsatellites, repetitive simple sequences of 1-6 nt in length, are abundant in eukaryotic genomes (Weber 1990a). Because of extensive variability in the number of repeat units for any one locus among members of a population, microsatellite loci exhibit high polymorphism. Microsatellite variation has become a useful class of genetic markers in population assessment for numerous species for questions of genetic identification, parentage, kinship, and population variability assessment (Jarne and Lagoda 1996; Goldstein and Pollock 1997). The high level of polymorphism at microsatellite loci is believed to result from slipped-strand mispairing during DNA replication (Levinson and Gutman 1987; Weber 1990b; Weber and Wong 1993; Krugylak et al. 1998), most commonly causing the gain or loss of one or more repeat units. This mutation mechanism would be expected to generate allelic homoplasy, i.e., comigrating allele size fragments which are not identical by descent or in DNA sequence among different individuals.