Microsatellite mutations are replication dependent.

<p>a) Shown are two scenarios for microsatellite mutations – replication dependent mutations that occur during mitotic divisions at a cell stage with two chromosomal copies (left), and spontaneous, replication independent mutations occurring at the quiescent oocyte stage with four chromosomal copies (right). While replication dependent mutations would result in two alleles, spontaneous mutations would mostly result in more than two alleles. The bottom plots show representative capillary signals. b) The increase with age in fraction of alleles with spontaneous mutations is significantly smaller than the increase in fraction of alleles with replication dependent mutations. <a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002477#s2" target="_blank">Results</a> are for the three longitudinal experiments.