Syntenator: A Tool for Gene Order Alignments
Author Information
Author(s): Christian Rödelsperger, Christoph Dieterich
Primary Institution: Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
Hypothesis
Can we develop a software that identifies conserved synteny across multiple genomes more effectively than existing methods?
Conclusion
Syntenator is a software solution that reliably infers conserved syntenies among distantly related genomes.
Supporting Evidence
- Syntenator reproduces 80% of the EnsEMBL man-mouse conserved syntenic blocks.
- The method defines larger homologous regions in pairwise gene order alignments than nucleotide-level comparisons.
- Syntenator shows the highest genome coverage compared to other methods.
Takeaway
Syntenator helps scientists find similar gene arrangements in different species, even when their DNA sequences don't match closely.
Methodology
Syntenator uses partial order graphs to represent genomes and align them using a dynamic programming approach with a gene-specific scoring function.
Limitations
The method may miss some conserved regions due to conservative parameter settings.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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