Isolation and characterization of microsatellites from the canine genome.

Microsatellite sequences comprising (dC-dA)n.(dG-dT)n repeats have been isolated from canine libraries and sequenced. Oligonucleotide primers have been synthesized to the microsatellite flanking sequences and used in the polymerase chain reaction to amplify those loci from genomic DNA. The degree of polymorphism of each microsatellite was estimated in a set of unrelated dogs. It is concluded that of the 10 loci studied, nine are sufficiently polymorphic to be useful in genetic studies.