4.14.3 SNP or micro? (2024)

Advantage of the SNP over the micro is that genotyping does not require separate analyses for each marker, but, because they are point mutations and thus do not differ in length, they can be genotyped in one go. It is much easier to automate and thus much cheaper.

Disadvantage of the SNP over the micro is that the SNP only has 2 alleles. As a measure for genetic diversity, a single SNP is not very useful, whereas a single micro can already give substantial information with respect to genetic differences in a group of animals. For the same amount of information on genetic variation, you would need a number of SNP.

Micros are typically used in biodiversity studies in species where there are no SNP-chips with large numbers of SNP available.