A nearly exhaustive search for CpG islands on whole chromosomes.

ABSTRACT: CpG islands are genome subsequences with an unexpectedly high number of CG di-nucleotides. They are typically identified using filtering criteria (e.g., G+C% expected vs. observed CpG ratio and length) and are computed using sliding window methods. Most such studies illusively assume an exhaustive search of CpG islands are achieved on the genome sequence of interest. We devise a Lexis diagram and explicitly show that filtering criteria-based definitions of CpG islands are mathematically incomplete and non-operational. These facts imply that the sliding window methods frequently fail to identify a large percentage of subsequences that meet the filtering criteria. We also demonstrate that an exhaustive search is computationally expensive. We develop the Hierarchical Factor Segmentation (HFS)

SUBMITTER: Hsieh F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2818740 | biostudies-literature | 2009

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature