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Module 6.4 · Topic 4
Module 6.4 · Topic 4
A raw genome sequence, with no labels telling you where the genes actually are
A newly assembled genome is just a long, unbroken string of A, T, G, and C — no punctuation marking where one gene ends and the next begins. Finding the genes hiding inside that string is a genuinely separate problem from assembling the sequence in the first place.
Translation, back in Molecular Biology, always begins at a start codon (AUG/ATG) and ends at a stop codon, reading three bases at a time with no premature stop in between. Could scanning a raw genome sequence for exactly this pattern help locate genes computationally?
An open reading frame (ORF) is defined as:
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