Vol. 11, Issue 11, 1807-1816, November 2001

LETTER
Comparing Vertebrate Whole-Genome Shotgun Reads to the Human Genome

Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA

Multi-species sequence comparisons are a very efficient way to reveal conserved genes. Because sequence finishing is expensive and time consuming, many genome sequences are likely to stay incomplete. A challenge is to use these fragmented data for understanding the human genome. Methods for using cross-species whole-genome shotgun sequence (WGS) for genome annotation are described in this paper. About one-half million high-quality rat WGS reads (covering 7.5% of the rat genome) generated at the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center were compared with the human genome. Using computer-generated random reads as a negative control, a set of parameters was determined for reliable interpretation of BLAST search results. About 10% of the rat reads contain regions that are conserved in the human genomic sequence and about one-third of these include known gene-coding regions. Mapping the conserved regions to human chromosomes showed a 23-fold enrichment for coding regions compared with noncoding regions. This approach can also be applied to other mammalian genomes for gene finding. These data predicted ~42,500 genes in the human, slightly more than reported previously.