Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Assessing the gene space in draft genomes

2008; Oxford University Press; Volume: 37; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/nar/gkn916

1362-4962

Genı́s Parra, Keith Bradnam, Zemin Ning, Thomas Keane, Ian Korf,

RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms

Genome sequencing projects have been initiated for a wide range of eukaryotes. A few projects have reached completion, but most exist as draft assemblies. As one of the main reasons to sequence a genome is to obtain its catalog of genes, an important question is how complete or completable the catalog is in unfinished genomes. To answer this question, we have identified a set of core eukaryotic genes (CEGs), that are extremely highly conserved and which we believe are present in low copy numbers in higher eukaryotes. From an analysis of a phylogenetically diverse set of eukaryotic genome assemblies, we found that the proportion of CEGs mapped in draft genomes provides a useful metric for describing the gene space, and complements the commonly used N50 length and x-fold coverage values.