Screening synteny blocks in pairwise genome comparisons through integer programming

Background: It is difficult to accurately interpret chromosomal correspondences such as true orthology and paralogy due to significant divergence of genomes from a common ancestor. Analyses are particularly problematic among lineages that have repeatedly experienced whole genome duplication (WGD) events. To compare multiple “subgenomes” derived from genome duplications, we need to relax the traditional requirements of “one-to-one” syntenic matchings of genomic regions in order to reflect “one-to-many” or more generally “many-to-many” matchings. However this relaxation may result in the identification of synteny blocks that are derived from ancient shared WGDs that are not of interest. For many downstream analyses, we need to eliminate weak, low scoring alignments from pairwise genome comparisons. Our goal is to objectively select subset of synteny blocks whose total scores are maximized while respecting the duplication history of the genomes in comparison. We call this...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Haibao Tang, Eric Lyons, Brent S. Pedersen, James C. Schnable, Andrew H. Paterson, Michael Freeling
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, BMCBI 2011, Genome Duplications, Genomes, Synteny Blocks