Current trends in forest science research using microsatellite markers in Korean national journals

Abstract

Microsatellites, which are sequences of repetitive short nucleotides, are abundant in the genome and have relatively many alleles at a locus. Hence, microsatellite markers are used in various research areas such as medicine, agriculture, and biology. Thanks to recent advanced techniques and databases associated with microsatellite marker development, foreign research relying on microsatellite markers is increasing in various study areas. In this study, by analyzing microsatellites-related articles published during 2000-2014 from eight Korean national journals representing zoology, botany, genetics, ecology and environmental science, breeding science, and forest science ('Animal Cells and Systems', 'Journal of Plant Biology', 'Genes and Genomics', 'Korean Society of Environment and Ecology', 'Korean Journal of Breeding Science', 'Journal of Agricultural Science, Chungnam National University', 'Journal of Korean Forest Society' and 'Forest Science and Technology'), we found that the number of articles and diversity of study subjects and objects have increased considerably. However, there are fewer applications of microsatellites in the national forest science area. During 2000-2014 in 'Journal of Korean Forest Society', the percentage of articles dealing with microsatellite markers was found to be the lowest with 4.2% among articles focusing on PCR-based markers including RAPD, AFLP, and ISSR. However, in 'Canadian Journal of Forest Research' and 'Forest Ecology and Management', microsatellite marker articles were represented at their highest with 69.2% and 76.2%, respectively. Given the advantages of microsatellite markers, the publication of research papers using microsatellites should be increased in Korean forest science journals to the level of studies published in prominent international journals.