Genome instability studies could change treatment for cancer and other diseases. PENN State News, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, by Seth Palmer, July 1, 2013
Prior evolutionary studies have indicated that long microsatellites are biased towards a type of mutation known as repeat expansion, which increases the number of times that a DNA sequence is repeated and which is known to cause inherited disorders such as Huntington's Disease, myotonic dystrophy, fragile X syndrome type A, Friedreich's ataxia, and a number of spinocerebellar ataxias.