The analysis of microsatellites and compound microsatellites in 56 complete genomes of Herpesvirales

•The relationship was analyzed between GC content, genome size, CM and CCM.•The SSRs are obviously more in genic than in intergenic regions.•Most of larger compound microsatellites are existed in intergenic regions.•The distribution of SSRs is organism-specific rather than host-specific.

Simple sequence repeats (SSRs), or microsatellites, are special DNA/RNA sequences with repeated unit of 1–6 bp. The genomes of Herpesvirales have many repeating structures, which is an excellent system to study the evolution and roles of microsatellites and compound microsatellites in viruses. Therefore, 56 genomes of Herpesvirales were selected and the occurrence, composition and complexity of different repeats were investigated in the genomes. A total of 63,939 microsatellites and 5825 compound microsatellites were extracted from 56 genomes. It found that GC content has a significant strong correlation with both the counts of microsatellites (CM) and the counts of compound microsatellites (CCM). However, genome size has a moderate correlation only with CM and almost no correlation with CCM. The compound microsatellites occurring in genic regions are obviously more than that in intergenic regions. In general, the number of compound microsatellite decreases with the increase of complexity (C) (the count of individual microsatellites being part of a compound microsatellite) and the complexity hardly exceeds C = 4. The vast majority of compound microsatellites exist in intergenic regions, when C ≥ 10. The distributions of SSRs tend to be organism-specific rather than host-specific in herpesvirus genomes. The diversity of microsatellites and compound microsatellites may be helpful for a better understanding of the viral genetic diversity, genotyping, and evolutionary biology in herpesviruses genomes.