eprintid: 10337 rev_number: 12 eprint_status: archive userid: 1305 dir: disk0/00/01/03/37 datestamp: 2017-12-01 04:17:55 lastmod: 2017-12-01 04:18:33 status_changed: 2017-12-01 04:17:55 type: article metadata_visibility: show contact_email: Library-ICRISAT@CGIAR.ORG creators_name: Krishnan, J creators_name: Athar, F creators_name: Swaroopa Rani, T creators_name: Mishra, R K icrisatcreators_name: Swaroopa Rani, T affiliation: Stowers Institute for Medical Research (Kansas City) affiliation: ICRISAT (Patancheru) affiliation: CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (Hyderabad) country: USA country: India title: Simple sequence repeats showing ‘length preference’ have regulatory functions in humans ispublished: pub subjects: s2.13 full_text_status: restricted keywords: Simple sequence repeats, Microsatellites, Simple tandem repeats, Cis-regulatory activity, Gene regulation, Boundary elements, Barrier elements, SSRs, STRs, QTLs, human cell lines note: We thank Gary Felsenfeld for his kind gift of boundary assay plasmid and S. Krishnan for the barrier assay plasmid. We acknowledge financial support of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) through Network grants (BSC0118 and BSC0121). abstract: Simple sequence repeats (SSRs), simple tandem repeats (STRs) or microsatellites are short tandem repeats of 1–6 nucleotide motifs. They are twice as abundant as the protein coding DNA in the human genome and yet little is known about their functional relevance. Analysis of genomes across various taxa show that despite the instability associated with longer stretches of repeats, few SSRs with specific longer repeat lengths are enriched in the genomes indicating a positive selection. This conserved feature of length dependent enrichment hints at not only sequence but also length dependent functionality for SSRs. In the present study, we selected 23 SSRs of the human genome that show specific repeat length dependent enrichment and analysed their cis-regulatory potential using promoter modulation, boundary and barrier assays. We find that the 23 SSR sequences, which are mostly intergenic and intronic, possess distinct cis-regulatory potential. They modulate minimal promoter activity in transient luciferase assays and are capable of functioning as enhancer-blockers and barrier elements. The results of our functional assays propose cis-gene regulatory roles for these specific length enriched SSRs and opens avenues for further investigations. date: 2017-08-10 date_type: published publication: Gene volume: 628 publisher: Elsevier pagerange: 156-161 id_number: 10.1016/j.gene.2017.07.022 refereed: TRUE issn: 0378-1119 official_url: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gene.2017.07.022 related_url_url: https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Simple+sequence+repeats+showing+%E2%80%98length+preference%E2%80%99+have+regulatory+functions+in+humans&btnG= related_url_type: pub funders: Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) through Network grants (BSC0118 and BSC0121). citation: Krishnan, J and Athar, F and Swaroopa Rani, T and Mishra, R K (2017) Simple sequence repeats showing ‘length preference’ have regulatory functions in humans. Gene, 628. pp. 156-161. ISSN 0378-1119 document_url: http://oar.icrisat.org/10337/1/Simple%20sequence%20repeats%20showing.pdf