ExceS-A: an exon-centric split aligner

Spliced alignments are a key step in the construction of high-quality homology-based annotations of protein sequences. The exon/intron structure, which is computed as part of spliced alignment procedures, often conveys important information for the distinguishing paralogous members of gene families. Here we present an exon-centric pipeline for spliced alignment that is intended in particular for applications that involve exon-by-exon comparisons of coding sequences. We show that the simple, blat-based approach has advantages over established tools in particular for genes with very large introns and applications to fragmented genome assemblies.