A Probabilistic Approach to the Assessment of Phylogenetic Conservation in Mammalian Hox Gene Clusters

  • Stojanovic, Nikola (Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington) ;
  • Dewar, Ken (Department of Human Genetics, McGill University, Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, Montreal)
  • Published : 2005.09.22

Abstract

With the increasing availability of mammalian genome sequences it became possible to use large scale phylogenetic analysis in order to locate potentially functional regions. In this paper we describe a new probabilistic method for the characterization of phylogenetic conservation in mammalian DNA sequences. We have used this method for the analysis of Hox gene clusters, based on the alignment of 6 species, and we constructed a map of for indicating short and long conserved fragments and their positions with respect to the known locations of Hox genes and other elements, sometimes showing surprising layouts.

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