We describe a new method named FIASCO (Fast Isolation by AFLP of Sequences Containing repeats) that considerably accelerate the isolation of new microsatellite loci in possibly any genome.

"Microsatellites or simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are tandemly repeated motifs of 1-6 bases found in all prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes analyzed to date." This is the opening sentence of our paper that could well summarize the potentially wide interest in microsatellites. These molecular markers are becoming more and more popular in many different fields of biology, from ecology to genome mapping. Our paper is a mix of review on what is known on microsatellites and description of new techniques (potentially applicable to any organism) for their fast isolation. All this may justify a growing interest in this paper.

We describe a new method named FIASCO (Fast Isolation by AFLP of Sequences COntaining repeats) that considerably accelerates the isolation of new microsatellite loci in possibly any genome. If you consider that microsatellite isolation usually takes weeks (or months), the possibility offered by FIASCO of reducing to a few days the entire process may also be one of increasing interest.

Highly polymorphic molecular markers such as microsatellites are very important tools in many different fields of biology. Our paper provides a review on microsatellite genome distribution in different organisms, it summarizes various techniques for microsatellite isolation, and describes a new one that is quick and easy.

Our interest in evolution is longstanding. The analysis of DNA markers for studying macro- and micro-evolutionary processes started in 1990. Microsatellites are extremely powerful tools that we have been using during the last several years for various purposes ranging from that of population genetics to genome mapping.