Approaching the taxonomic affiliation of unidentified sequences in public databases - an example from the mycorrhizal fungi

Background: During the last few years, DNA sequence analysis has become one of the primary means of taxonomic identification of species, particularly so for species that are minute or otherwise lack distinct, readily obtainable morphological characters. Although the number of sequences available for comparison in public databases such as GenBank increases exponentially, only a minuscule fraction of all organisms have been sequenced, leaving taxon sampling a momentous problem for sequence-based taxonomic identification. When querying GenBank with a set of unidentified sequences, a considerable proportion typically lack fully identified matches, forming an ever-mounting pile of sequences that the researcher will have to monitor manually in the hope that new, clarifying sequences have been submitted by other researchers. To alleviate these concerns, a project to automatically monitor select unidentified sequences in GenBank for taxonomic progress through repeated local BLAST searches was...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: R. Henrik Nilsson, Erik Kristiansson, Martin Ryberg, Karl-Henrik Larsson
• Keywords: BMCBI 2005, Dna Sequences, Sequences, Taxonomic Identification