BMC Plant Biology BioMed Central Research article Open Access Characterization and transferability of microsatellite markers of the cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea) Marcos A Gimenes*1,2, Andrea A Hoshino1, Andrea VG Barbosa1, Dario A Palmieri1 and Catalina R Lopes1 Address: 1Laboratório de Biotecnologia e Genética Molecular (BIOGEM), Departamento de Genética, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Botucatu, SP, Brazil and 2Instituto Agronômico de Campinas – RGV, Caixa Postal 28, Campinas, SP, Brazil Email: Marcos A Gimenes* -
[email protected]; Andrea A Hoshino -
[email protected]; Andrea VG Barbosa -
[email protected]; Dario A Palmieri -
[email protected]; Catalina R Lopes -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 27 February 2007 Received: 3 March 2006 Accepted: 27 February 2007 BMC Plant Biology 2007, 7:9 doi:10.1186/1471-2229-7-9 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/7/9 © 2007 Gimenes et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The genus Arachis includes Arachis hypogaea (cultivated peanut) and wild species that are used in peanut breeding or as forage. Molecular markers have been employed in several studies of this genus, but microsatellite markers have only been used in few investigations. Microsatellites are very informative and are useful to assess genetic variability, analyze mating systems and in genetic mapping. The objectives of this study were to develop A.