Satellite DNA

Satellite DNA consists of highly repetative DNA, and is so-called because repetitive DNA sequences tend to be have a relatively high frequency of the nucleotides Adenine and Thymine, and thus have lower density - such that they form a second 'satellite' band when genomic DNA is separated along a density gradient.

The repeated pattern can be between 1 basepair long (a mononucleotide repeat ) several thousand base pairs long, and the total size of a satellite DNA block can several be megabases without interruption.

See also

• Tandem repeat
• Minisatellite
• Microsatellite
• mononucleotide repeat