Tandem repeats in the rodent genome and their mapping

Tandemly repeated sequences are unique to eukaryotes and make up tens of percent of the higher eukaryote genome. However, the evolution of this class of sequences is poorly studied. In our paper, 62 families of Mus musculus tandem repeats are analyzed by bioinformatic methods, while 7 of them are analyzed by fluorescence in situ hybridization. It is shown that the same tandem repeat sets occur together only in closely related species of mice. However, even in such species, we observe differences in localization on chromosomes and the number of individual tandem repeats. With increasing evolutionary distance, only some of the tandem repeat families remain common for different species. It is shown that the use of a combination of bioinformatics and molecular biology techniques is very promising for further studies of tandem repeat evolution. © 2015, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.