STR Genotyping Laboratory, Research and Development Division, Vita Genomics, Inc., 7Fl., No. 6, Sec. 1, Jungshing Rd, Wugu Shiang, Taipei County, 248 Taiwan

Correspondence: Lawrenc Shih-Hsin Wu, STR Genotyping Laboratory, Research and Development Division, Vita Genomics, Inc., 7Fl., No. 6, Sec. 1, Jungshing Rd, Wugu Shiang, Taipei County, 248 Taiwan. Fax: +886-2-89769523. E-mail: lawrence.wu@vitagenomics.com

Received 6 January 2004; Accepted 15 March 2004; Published online 19 May 2004.

Abstract

To evaluate basic informativeness of commercially available microsatellite markers in the Taiwanese population, 190 unrelated Taiwanese children were genotyped using ABI PRISM Linkage Mapping Set-HD5. The average heterozygosity in Taiwanese was slightly lower than that in Caucasians among these 811 microsatellite markers. There were 50 marker loci with heterozygosities lower than 50%. Moreover, allelic distributions at many of the loci were significantly different in two ethnic groups. The results reported here represent a valuable database for disease genes mapping in the Taiwanese population. This database can be easily accessed at the Web site of Vita Genomics, Inc. (http://www.vitagenomics.com/str.html).