Open AccessA new repeat-masking method enables specific detection of homologous sequences
Author(s) -
Martin C. Frith
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
nucleic acids research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 9.008
H-Index - 537
eISSN - 1362-4954
pISSN - 0305-1048
DOI - 10.1093/nar/gkq1212
Subject(s) - biology , dna , homology (biology) , spurious relationship , computational biology , genetics , homologous chromosome , repeated sequence , genome , gene , computer science , machine learning
Biological sequences are often analyzed by detecting homologous regions between them. Homology search is confounded by simple repeats, which give rise to strong similarities that are not homologies. Standard repeat-masking methods fail to eliminate this problem, and they are especially ill-suited to AT-rich DNA such as malaria and slime-mould genomes. We present a new repeat-masking method, TANTAN, which is motivated by the mechanisms that create simple repeats. This method thoroughly eliminates spurious homology predictions for DNA-DNA, protein-protein and DNA-protein comparisons. Moreover, it enables accurate homology search for non-coding DNA with extreme A + T composition.