Abstract
Dogs share a common environment with humans and knowledge of the specific dog breed diseases is very useful in developing a model for human cancer studies. ESTs represent part of the transcribed genome of an organism and are an important resource for identifying microsatellites. Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs), or microsatellites, which contain repetitive DNA sequences, are among the most powerful genetic markers known. The development of EST-SSRs has become a fast, efficient, and low-cost option for genomic studies. In this study, to determine SSRs from EST libraryof mammary gland tissue of the Terrier dog that has 2304 ESTs; SSRIT and IMEx software, which have web-based versions and are easily accessible, were used. SSRIT finds motifs from 2 to 10 base lengths and adjusts the minimum number of repeats by eliminating single nucleotide motifs. IMEx finds perfect and imperfect microsatellites separately. It can find motifs of different lengths from 1 to 6 and the minimum number of repeats can be set. In addition, the appropriate primer for the desired SSR region can be designed. The 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 nucleotide motifs were found for normal tissue ESTs whereas 5 nucleotide motifs were not found for tumoral tissue ESTs.