Detecting key structural features within highly recombined genes.

ABSTRACT: Many microorganisms exhibit high levels of intragenic recombination following horizontal gene transfer events. Furthermore, many microbial genes are subject to strong diversifying selection as part of the pathogenic process. A multiple sequence alignment is an essential starting point for many of the tools that provide fundamental insights on gene structure and evolution, such as phylogenetics; however, an accurate alignment is not always possible to attain. In this study, a new analytic approach was developed in order to better quantify the genetic organization of highly diversified genes whose alleles do not align. This BLAST-based method, denoted BLAST Miner, employs an iterative process that places short segments of highly similar sequence into discrete datasets that are designated "mo

SUBMITTER: Wertz JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1782043 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature