Tree pattern matching in phylogenetic trees: automatic search for orthologs or paralogs in homologous gene sequence databases

Abstract

Motivation: Comparative sequence analysis is widely used to study genome function and evolution. This approach first requires the identification of homologous genes and then the interpretation of their homology relationships (orthology or paralogy). To provide help in this complex task, we developed three databases of homologous genes containing sequences, multiple alignments and phylogenetic trees: HOBACGEN, HOVERGEN and HOGENOM. In this paper, we present two new tools for automating the search for orthologs or paralogs in these databases.