Structure-based realignment of non-coding RNAs in multiple whole genome alignments

Whole genome alignments have become a central tool in biological sequence analysis. A major application is the de novo prediction of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) from structural conservation visible in the alignment. However, current methods for constructing genome alignments do so by explicitly optimizing for sequence similarity but not structural similarity. Therefore, de novo prediction of ncRNAs with high structural but low sequence conservation is intrinsically challenging in a genome alignment because the conservation signal is typically hidden. This study addresses this problem with a method for genome-wide realignment of potential ncRNAs according to structural similarity. Doing so reveals thousands of new high-confidence ncRNA predictions with particularly low sequence conservation from an alignment of 12 Drosophila genomes and hundreds from an alignment of 28 vertebrate genomes in the Encode project.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Yu, Michael Ku

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bonnie Berger.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/66817

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/66817