tandem repeat

:  any of several identical DNA segments lying one after the other in a sequence Although certain of these repetitive sequences are scattered throughout the DNA, others are reiterated many times in a row, so that they resemble the DNA equivalent of a stutter. These tandem repeats are usually found in critical regions, notably in the centromere …—Robert K. Moyzis, Scientific American, August 1991 The DNA fingerprint technique is based on the existence of regions of DNA that are made up of tandem repeats …—Roger Levin, Science, 1 Aug. 1986—compare long terminal repeat