The domestic goat (Capra hircus) is widely reared throughout the world. Goats serve as an important source of meat, milk, fiber and pelts, and have also fulfilled agricultural, economic, cultural and even religious roles since very early times in human civilization. Goats are recognized as an important member of the world livestock industry, and with many unique biological features. They are an important economic resource in many developing countries around the world, especially in China and India. However, despite their agricultural and biological importance, breeding and genetic studies of goats have been hampered by the lack of a high quality reference genome sequence. The goat genome sequence will be useful for facilitating the identification of SNP markers for marker-assisted breeding, and improving the utility of the goat as a biomedical model and bioreactor.

Microsatellites, also known as simple sequence repeats (SSRs) or simple tandem repeats (STRs), have extensively been exploited as molecular markers for diverse applications including genome characterization and mapping. Recently, their role in gene regulation and genome evolution has also been discussed widely.

We have developed GoSatdb (Goat MicroSatellite database), a web based relational database of microsatellites present in the whole genome sequence. GoSatdb allows microsatellite search using multiple parameters like microsatellite type simple and compound, repeat type (mono- to hexa-nucleotide), copy number, microsatellite length, pattern of the repeat motif itself and the location of the marker on the chromosome. Microsatellites can be retrieved by specifying the chromosome number (or numbers).  The database also searches the specified number of markers in a provided location range on a particular chromosome. The nucleotide sequences of the particular marker are also provided to facilitate primer designing for PCR amplification of any desired microsatellite. GoSatdb is available at http://webapp.cabgrid.res.in/goat/