Abstract.
Microsatellite (short tandem repeat) markers are useful tools for genetic linkage analysis because of their high frequency of occurrence in eukaryotic genomes, ease of typing, and high polymorphism content. To establish a panel of microsatellite markers useful for genome-wide screens in the Chinese population, we determined the heterozygosities and allelic frequencies of a widely used set of 285 markers in 208 individuals of Han Chinese descent. Although the median heterozygosity level in our Chinese population was 0.72, only 63.6% of these markers have a heterozygosity of at least 0.7, compared with 90.8% in the original Caucasian sample. The significant difference in heterozygosity and allelic frequencies between populations suggests that markers should be optimally selected for each study population to maximize information content and power.
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Received: July 1, 2002 / Accepted: August 23, 2002
Acknowledgments This work is partially supported by Singapore National Medical Research Council grant no. SERI/MG/96-01/0001 and by the Singapore Ministry of Defence. We would like to thank the SAF Medical Classification Centre and the Singapore Eye Research Institute Clinic staff for help in recruitment. We also thank S.J. Chew and D. Tan for their support.
The first two authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence to:E. Yap
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Tan, E., Wu, H., Yong, R. et al. Heterozygosities and allelic frequencies of a set of microsatellite markers used for genome-wide scans in a Chinese population. J Hum Genet 47, 623–631 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/s100380200096
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s100380200096
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