MSDB: A comprehensive database of simple sequence repeats

Abstract

Microsatellites, also known as Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs), are short tandem repeats of 1-6 nt motifs present in all genomes, particularly eukaryotes. Besides their usefulness as genome markers, SSRs have been shown to perform important regulatory functions, and variations in their length at coding regions are linked to several disorders in humans. Microsatellites show a taxonspecific enrichment in eukaryotic genomes, and some may be functional. MSDB (Microsatellite Database) is a collection of>650 million SSRs from 6,893 species including Bacteria, Archaea, Fungi, Plants, and Animals. This database is by far themost exhaustive resource to access and analyze SSR data ofmultiple species. In addition to exploring data in a customizable tabular format, users can view and compare the data of multiple species simultaneously using our interactive plotting system. MSDB is developed using the Django framework and MySQL. It is freely available at http://tdb.ccmb.res.in/msdb.