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 short tandem repeats (STRs), are repeating sequences of specific DNA which contains mono-, di-, tri-, or tetra-, penta- or hexa- tandem repeats such as (A)n, (CA)n, (GA)n, (GTA)n, (ATT)n, (GATA)n, (ATTTT)n, (ACGTCG)n. Genomes are scattered with these repeats. Repeats of longer units form minisatellites or satellite DNA. With the discovery of tandem iterations of simple sequence motifs, the term microsatellites was further coined.