Three-dimensional 3D Trajectory Research Articles

Global Visualization and Comparison of DNA Sequences by Use of Three-Dimensional Trajectories

In this study, the three-dimensional (3-D) trajectory (TDT) method for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence visualization and comparison is proposed. The global view of a DNA sequence in any sizes can be easily graphically represented by a TDT and examined for sequence characteristics. Studies of the TDTs of known DNA sequences and computer-generated sequences reveal significant pattern disparity. This pattern disparity may be helpful in monitoring the deliberate deposition of false sequences in public domains. The TDTs of the sequences from homologous and non-homologous genes are also manifested. In addition to the high efficiency in space utilization for graphical representation, the visual discrimination and quantitatively representation of the similarities among DNA sequences can also be achieved by the proposed method. Our visualization method is worthy of further exploitation as part of an annotation pipeline to identify highly homologous sequences in databases.