New Computational Technique for DNA sequencing

Zamin Iqbal of Wellcome Trush Centre for Human Genetics and colleagues report the development of a new DNA sequence assembly algorithm called Cortex. According to their paper published in Nature Genetics, Cortex has the ability to assemble several genomes of eukaryotes simultaneously. They also discussed how the algorithm has been used to identify the differences between different human genomes. Cortex provides a solution to computation memory problems that have been encountered by scientists who have tried to analyze a large amount of genome sequence information. The method is already being used in a wide series of collaborative studies within Oxford wherein Cortex, has been made freely available.

"Efficient tools such as Cortex will make the difference when it comes to making sense of the large sequence datasets that are being generated to study a wide range of biological systems, to link information about genome variation to important traits. At the Genome Analysis Centre we are working with complex genomes such as bread wheat, for which trait-specific information will be key for implementation of effective breeding programmes and ultimately contribute to the UK aims for food security", says Professor Jane Rogers, Director of The Genome Analysis Centre, where Mario Caccamo, one of the proponents of Cortex, leads the bioinformatics division.

Read the media release at http://www.tgac.ac.uk/news/18/68/Hidden-genetic-variants-revealed-by-new-computational-technique/. For more information on Cortex see the paper at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.1028 or the website: http://cortexassembler.sourceforge.net/.