MSDB: a user-friendly program for reporting distribution and building databases of microsatellites from genome sequences

Microsatellite Search and Building Database (MSDB) is a new Perl program providing a user-friendly interface for identification and building databases of microsatellites from complete genome sequences. The general aims of MSDB are to use the database to store the information of microsatellites and to facilitate the management, classification, and statistics of microsatellites. A user-friendly interface facilitates the treatment of large datasets. The program is powerful in finding various types of pure, compound, and complex microsatellites from sequences as well as generating a detailed statistical report in worksheet format. MSDB also contains other two subprograms: SWR, which is used to export microsatellites from the database to meet user's requirements, and SWP, which is used to automatically invoke R to draw a sliding window plot for displaying the distribution of density or frequency of identified microsatellites. MSDB is freely available under the GNU General Public license for Windows and Linux from the following website: http://msdb.biosv.com/.