Methods for Plant Genome Annotation

Synonyms

Functional annotation – functional description; Gene finding – gene prediction

Synopsis

Annotation is the process of identifying and describing the regions of biological interest within a genome. The location and structure of protein-coding genes is the most common form of annotation, but other types of important sequence annotation include the identification of noncoding RNAs (tRNAs, rRNAs, snoRNAs, miRNAs, siRNAs), repetitive sequences such as transposable elements, and the location of genetic markers. Functional annotation describes the biological context of gene sequences. Almost all genome annotation is performed using semiautomated computational pipelines and is subject to some degree of interpretation and error. Therefore, researchers must understand the methods used to create annotation in order to assess the quality of that annotation.

Introduction

With the increasing ease and decreasing cost of genome sequencing, new plant genome sequences are becoming available with...