How much effort is required to isolate nuclear microsatellites from plants?

Area of Science:

• Molecular Ecology
• Genetics
• Plant Science

Background:

• Nuclear microsatellites are popular genetic markers due to codominance, reproducibility, and high resolution.
• A major drawback is the extensive development phase for primer isolation in new species.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify the workload involved in isolating nuclear microsatellites from plants.
• To highlight locus attrition at each stage of the isolation process.
• To estimate the average effort required to obtain 10 working microsatellite primer pairs for project planning.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of studies involving nuclear microsatellite isolation in plants.
• Analysis of reported success rates and effort at different stages of primer development.

Main Results:

• Quantification of the average time and resources needed for microsatellite isolation.
• Identification of key stages with high locus attrition during the development process.
• Estimation of the mean number of loci screened and steps required to yield 10 usable primer pairs.

Conclusions:

• The development of nuclear microsatellites in plants is resource-intensive.
• Understanding the attrition rates and average effort can significantly improve project planning and resource allocation for molecular ecological studies.
• This review provides valuable data for researchers initiating new projects involving plant microsatellite marker development.