MICdb: Database of Prokaryotic Microsatellites

http://www.cdfd.org.in/micas

Sreenu B. Vattipally¹, Vishwanath Alevoor¹, Nagaraju, Javaregowda², Nagarajaram A. Hampapathalu¹

¹Laboratory of Computational Biology and Bioinformaitcs facility, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Nacharam, Hyderabad 500 076 INDIA.
²Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Nacharam, Hyderabad 500 076 INDIA

Contact han@cdfd.org.in

Database Description

The MICdb (Microsatellites database) (http://www.cdfd.org.in/micas) is a comprehensive relational database of non-redundant microsatellites extracted from fully sequenced prokaryotic genomes. The current version (1.0) of the database has been compiled from 83 genoms belonging to different phylogenetic groups. This database has been linked to MICAS, the Web-based Microstatellite Analysis Server. MICAS provides an user-friendly front-end to systematically extract data on microsatellite tracts from genomes. The database contains the following information pertaining to the microsatellites: The regions (coding/non-coding, if coding, their Genbank annotations) containing microsatellite tracts, the frequencies of their occurrences, the size and the number of repeating motifs and the sequences of the tracts. MICAS also provides an interface to Autoprimer, a primer design program to automatically design primers for selected microsatellite loci.

Acknowledgements

We thank Miss Sushma for assisting in the design of the Autoprimer software. VBS greatfully acknowledges the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Govt. of India, for the Junior Research Fellowship. HAN and JN gratefully acknowledge, respectively the core-grant from CDFD and an extramural grant from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Govt. of India.