Sequence assembly

Despite the rapidly increasing number of sequenced and re-sequenced genomes, many issues regarding the computational assembly of large-scale sequencing data have remain unresolved. Computational assembly is crucial in large genome projects as well for the evolving high-throughput technologies and plays an important role in processing the information generated by these methods. Here, we provide a comprehensive overview of the current publicly available sequence assembly programs. We describe the basic principles of computational assembly along with the main concerns, such as repetitive sequences in genomic DNA, highly expressed genes and alternative transcripts in EST sequences. We summarize existing comparisons of different assemblers and provide a detailed descriptions and directions for download of assembly programs at: http://genome.ku.dk/resources/assembly/methods.html.

SNP-finding in pig mitochondrial ESTs

The Sino-Danish pig genome project produced 685 851 ESTs (Gorodkin et al. 2007), of which 41 499 originated from the mitochondrial genome. In this study, the mitochondrial ESTs were assembled, and 374 putative SNPs were found. Chromatograms for the ESTs containing SNPs were manually inspected, and 112 total (52 non-synonymous) SNPs were found to be of high confidence (five of them are close to disease-causing SNPs in humans). Nine of the high-confidence SNPs were tested experimentally, and eight were confirmed. The SNPs can be accessed online at http://pigest.ku.dk/more/mito.