Data from: An empirical review: characteristics of plant microsatellite markers that confer higher levels of genetic variation

During microsatellite marker development, researchers must choose from a pool of possible primer pairs to further test in their species of interest. In many cases, the goal is maximizing detectable levels of genetic variation. To guide researchers and determine which markers are associated with higher levels of genetic variation, we conducted a literature review based on 6782 genomic microsatellite markers published from 1997–2012. We examined relationships between heterozygosity (He or Ho) or allele number (A) with the following marker characteristics: repeat type, motif length, motif region, repeat frequency, and microsatellite size. Variation across taxonomic groups was also analyzed. There were significant differences between imperfect and perfect repeat types in A and He. Dinucleotide motifs exhibited significantly higher A, He, and Ho than most other motifs. Repeat frequency and motif region were positively correlated with A, He, and Ho, but correlations with microsatellite size were minimal. Higher taxonomic groups were disproportionately represented in the literature and showed little consistency. In conclusion, researchers should carefully consider marker characteristics so they can be tailored to the desired application. If researchers aim to target high genetic variation, dinucleotide motif lengths with large repeat frequencies may be best.Plant Microsatellite DatabaseThis database contains plant microsatellite markers (Simple Sequence Repeats; SSRs) for the larger part of the last two decades. The dataset was compiled in an Excel 2007 spreadsheet from the Molecular Ecology Resources online database (where authors are required to submit primer information as a condition of publication) at http://tomato.bio.trinity.edu or were manually compiled from published articles in Molecular Ecology, Molecular Ecology Notes, Molecular Ecology Resources, and American Journal of Botany (AJB), spanning in total from 1997 to 2012. The articles were found by screening the Scopus (Elsevier) search engine. Please see the publication for more specifics on how the dataset was compiled and analyzed. Null values are represented with a period ('.'). We have included a ReadMe file to describe column headings.Microsatellite_Database.csvExcluded entriesThis file contains entries that were purposefully removed from our analyzed dataset. Please see the publication for more details. The ReadMe file is the same as that associated with the Plant Microsatellite Database file and contains column heading descriptions.Excluded_entries.cs