In:
Bioinformatics, Oxford University Press (OUP), Vol. 37, No. Supplement_1 ( 2021-08-04), p. i196-i204
Abstract:
Recent advances in long-read sequencing technologies led to rapid progress in centromere assembly in the last year and, for the first time, opened a possibility to address the long-standing questions about the architecture and evolution of human centromeres. However, since these advances have not been yet accompanied by the development of the centromere-specific bioinformatics algorithms, even the fundamental questions (e.g. centromere annotation by deriving the complete set of human monomers and high-order repeats), let alone more complex questions (e.g. explaining how monomers and high-order repeats evolved) about human centromeres remain open. Moreover, even though there was a four-decade-long series of studies aimed at cataloging all human monomers and high-order repeats, the rigorous algorithmic definitions of these concepts are still lacking. Thus, the development of a centromere annotation tool is a prerequisite for follow-up personalized biomedical studies of centromeres across the human population and evolutionary studies of centromeres across various species. Results We describe the CentromereArchitect, the first tool for the centromere annotation in a newly sequenced genome, apply it to the recently generated complete assembly of a human genome by the Telomere-to-Telomere consortium, generate the complete set of human monomers and high-order repeats for ‘live’ centromeres, and reveal a vast set of hybrid monomers that may represent the focal points of centromere evolution. Availability and implementation CentromereArchitect is publicly available on https://github.com/ablab/stringdecomposer/tree/ismb2021 Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
1367-4803
,
1367-4811
DOI:
10.1093/bioinformatics/btab265
Language:
English
Publisher:
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Publication Date:
2021
detail.hit.zdb_id:
1468345-3
SSG:
12