Identification of parasitic genes by computational methods

A number of parasite genome projects are under way, and large amounts of nucleotide sequence data are becoming available for analysis. There is an urgent need for development of theoretical tools to analyze the genome data, including identification of protein-coding sequences. The majority of the methods developed to date require prior information about the genome before accurate predictions can be made. Because such information is not available for many parasites, these methods cannot be directly applied. In this article, Alok Bhattacharya and colleagues describe some of the gene-prediction methods commonly in use, and a new method, GeneScan, that they have developed for the analysis of parasite genomes.