Microsatellite Density Landscapes Illustrate Short Tandem Repeats Aggregation in The Complete Reference Human Genome

Abstract

We systematically built more than 100,000 microsatellites landscape-maps with identifying 3,433 and 5,306 high density microsatellites accumulation (HDMA) peaks in the human reference genome (GRCh38, p13 version) and the first complete human genome (T2T-CHM13, 1.1 version) at 1 kilobase resolution. Intuitive HDMA peak-locus maps were constructed for every chromosome of the 2 genomes, revealing that these HDMA peaks are distributed regularly along every chromosome. Data mining and comparison of HDMA peaks illustrated that most of the HDMA peaks may play biological roles with highly variable genomic sequences. Therefore, comparing the variation of HDMA peaks will provide an unprecedented approach to study human genetic variation.