Minisatellite variant repeat mapping by polymerase chain reaction (MVR-PCR) reveals an enormous degree of variation in the human minisatellite regions. The original approach involved the use of P-32-labelled probes to detect the MVR-PCR products generated. To date, the loci mapped include D1S8, D7S21 and D16S309. However, the most polymorphic locus, D1S7 (MS1), which has been used in forensic analysis, has presented technical difficulties, initially due to its short 9 bp repeats that are much shorter than any conventional primer sequences. This was overcome by using the method of "wrapping around" primers employing inosine at the redundancy position. The difficulty of cloning highly repetitive DNA was overcome by utilising specialised competent SURE(R) cells. We report the cloning and sequencing of selected short MS1 alleles to determine the variety of repeat types. This survey revealed nine types, four of which represented greater than 80% of the sequenced repeats. The reported MVR-PCR system maps the MS1 locus for these four common repeat types by fluorescence detection.