Document Type

Article

Original Publication Date

2008

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Comparative and Functional Genomics

Volume

2008

DOI of Original Publication

10.1155/2008/565631

Comments

Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2008/565631

Date of Submission

August 2014

Abstract

There has been much interest in CpG islands (CGIs), clusters of CpG dinucleotides in GC-rich regions, because they are considered gene markers and involved in gene regulation. To date, there has been no genome-wide analysis of CGIs in the fish genome. We first evaluated the performance of three popular CGI identification algorithms in four fish genomes (tetraodon, stickleback, medaka, and zebrafish). Our results suggest that Takai and Jones' (2002) algorithm is most suitable for comparative analysis of CGIs in the fish genome. Then, we performed a systematic analysis of CGIs in the four fish genomes using Takai and Jones' algorithm, compared to other vertebrate genomes. We found that both the number of CGIs and the CGI density vary greatly among these genomes. Remarkably, each fish genome presents a distinct distribution of CGI density with some genomic factors (e.g., chromosome size and chromosome GC content). These findings are helpful for understanding evolution of fish genomes and the features of fish CGIs.

Rights

Copyright © 2008 Leng Han and Zhongming Zhao. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Is Part Of

VCU Psychiatry Publications

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