Detection of homologous recombination events in bacterial genomes

PLoS One. 2013 Oct 7;8(10):e75230. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075230. eCollection 2013.

Abstract

We study the detection of mutations, sequencing errors, and homologous recombination events (HREs) in a set of closely related microbial genomes. We base the model on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and break the genomes into blocks to handle the rearrangement problem. Then we apply a dynamic programming algorithm to model whether changes within each block are likely a result of mutations, sequencing errors, or HREs. Results from simulation experiments show that we can detect 31%-61% of HREs and the precision of our detection is about 48%-90% depending on the rates of mutation and missing data. The HREfinder software for predicting HREs in a set of whole genomes is available as open source (http://sourceforge.net/projects/hrefinder/).

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Genome, Bacterial*
  • Genomics / methods*
  • Homologous Recombination*
  • Models, Genetic
  • Mutation
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
  • Software