Editing Microsatellite (section)

===Genetic linkage analysis===
During the 1990s and the first several years of this millennium, microsatellites were the workhorse genetic markers for genome-wide scans to locate any gene responsible for a given phenotype or disease, using [[Mendelian inheritance#Law of Segregation of genes (the "First Law")|segregation]] observations across generations of a sampled pedigree. Although the rise of higher throughput and cost-effective [[single-nucleotide polymorphism]] (SNP) platforms led to the era of the SNP for genome scans, microsatellites remain highly informative measures of genomic variation for linkage and association studies. Their continued advantage lies in their greater allelic diversity than biallelic SNPs, thus microsatellites can differentiate alleles within a SNP-defined linkage disequilibrium block of interest. Thus, microsatellites have successfully led to discoveries of type 2 diabetes ([[TCF7L2]]) and prostate cancer genes (the 8q21 region).<ref name="Gulcher2012">{{cite journal | vauthors = Lu W, Zhang Y, Liu D, Songyang Z, Wan M | title = Telomeres-structure, function, and regulation | journal = Experimental Cell Research | volume = 319 | issue = 2 | pages = 133–141 | date = January 2013 | pmid = 23006819 | pmc = 4051234 | doi = 10.1016/j.yexcr.2012.09.005 }}</ref><ref name="Ott2015">{{cite journal | vauthors = Ott J, Wang J, Leal SM | title = Genetic linkage analysis in the age of whole-genome sequencing | journal = Nature Reviews. Genetics | volume = 16 | issue = 5 | pages = 275–284 | date = May 2015 | pmid = 25824869 | pmc = 4440411 | doi = 10.1038/nrg3908 }}</ref>