[Microsatellite markers and applications in the barley genome]

Microsatellites, also called simple sequence repeats (SSR), are simple, tandemly repeated DNA sequences with a repeat length of a few base pairs,and are very ideally used as molecular markers because of their abundance, high level of polymorphism, co-dominance and ease of assay with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) by selecting primers as the conserved DNA sequences flanking the SSRs,as well as better stability. The experiments showed that SSRs are randomly distributed throughout the barley genome,and there are 3-18 alleles at a single SSR locus,up to 37 alleles/locus. SSR markers have being widely applied in the construction of molecular genetic map, the study of genetic diversity,the identification of germplasm, gene mapping for important traits and molecular marker-assisted selection. Meanwhile,most of markers are strongly clustered around the centromeric regions of all seven linkage groups. As a result of the clustering,genome coverage with SSRs remains incomplete with an obvious lack of markers on the long arms of chromosomes 1H and 5H and short arm of chromosome 6H. Therefore,it is very potential and necessary to further develop SSR markers in barley.