Heterozygosities and allelic frequencies of a set of microsatellite markers used for genome-wide scans in a Chinese population.

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.