Fig. 7.

—Patterns of insertion and deletion in microsatellites and dependency on array length. (A) Mean repeat number associated with insertions or deletions for different motif sizes. For all motif sizes (except 4 bp) insertions are observed in microsatellites with fewer repeats than deletions: this is significant for the most abundant motif type (dinucleotides). (B) Size distribution of insertion and deletion events by motif type. The size distribution of indels is skewed and deletions tend to be larger than insertions. (C) The relationship between indel (±) size and repeat number with dinucleotides. Long repeat arrays show larger changes in repeat number than short repeat arrays and there is a significant excess of large repeat losses. Distribution of insertion and deletion size for short (≤15) and long (>15) repeats. (D) Deletions are significantly larger on average than insertions with dinucleotides (see also panel C).