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SPIDEY(1)		    NCBI Tools User's Manual		       SPIDEY(1)

NAME
     spidey - align mRNA sequences to a genome

SYNOPSIS
     spidey  [-]  [-F N]  [-G]	[-L N] [-M filename] [-N filename] [-R filename]
     [-S p/m]  [-T N]  [-X]  [-a filename]  [-c N]  [-d]  [-e X]  [-f X]  [-g X]
     -i filename  [-j]	[-k filename]  [-l N] -m filename [-n N] [-o str] [-p N]
     [-r c/d/m/p/v] [-s] [-t filename] [-u] [-w]

DESCRIPTION
     spidey is a tool for aligning one or more mRNA sequences to a given genomic
     sequence.	spidey was written with two main goals in mind: find good align-
     ments regardless of intron size;  and  avoid  getting  confused  by  nearby
     pseudogenes  and  paralogs.   Towards the first goal, spidey uses BLAST and
     Dot View (another local alignment tool) to find its alignments; since these
     are both local alignment tools, spidey does not intrinsically favor shorter
     or longer introns and has no maximum intron size.	To avoid mistakenly  in-
     cluding  exons  from paralogs and pseudogenes, spidey first defines windows
     on the genomic sequence and then  performs  the  mRNA-to-genomic  alignment
     separately  within  each  window.	 Because of the way the windows are con-
     structed, neighboring paralogs or pseudogenes should be in separate windows
     and should not be included in the final spliced alignment.

   Initial alignments and construction of genomic windows
     spidey takes as input a single genomic sequence and a set	of  mRNA  acces-
     sions  or	FASTA  sequences.  All processing is done one mRNA sequence at a
     time.  The first step for each mRNA sequence  is  a  high-stringency  BLAST
     against  the genomic sequence.  The resulting hits are analyzed to find the
     genomic windows.

     The BLAST alignments are sorted by score and then assigned into windows  by
     a recursive function which takes the first alignment and then goes down the
     alignment	list  to  find all alignments that are consistent with the first
     (same strand of mRNA, both the mRNA and genomic coordinates are nonoverlap-
     ping and linearly consistent).  On subsequent passes, the remaining  align-
     ments  are  examined  and are put into their own nonoverlapping, consistent
     windows, until no alignments are left.  Depending on how many  gene  models
     are desired, the top n windows are chosen to go on to the next step and the
     others are deleted.

   Aligning in each window
     Once  the genomic windows are constructed, the initial BLAST alignments are
     freed and another BLAST search is performed, this time with the entire mRNA
     against the genomic region defined by the window, and at a lower stringency
     than the initial search.  spidey then uses a greedy algorithm to generate a
     high-scoring, nonoverlapping subset of the alignments from the second BLAST
     search.  This consistent set is analyzed carefully to make  sure  that  the
     entire mRNA sequence is covered by the alignments.  When gaps are found be-
     tween  the  alignments,  the  appropriate	region	of  genomic  sequence is
     searched against the missing mRNA, first using a very low-stringency  BLAST
     and,  if  the  BLAST fails to find a hit, using DotView functions to locate
     the alignment.  When gaps are found at the  ends  of  the	alignments,  the
     BLAST  and  DotView searches are actually allowed to extend past the bound-
     aries of the window.  If the 3' end of the mRNA does not align  completely,
     it  is  first  examined  for the presence of a poly(A) tail.  No attempt is
     made to align the portion of the mRNA that seems  to  be  a  poly(A)  tail;
     sometimes	there is a poly(A) tail that does align to the genomic sequence,
     and these are noted because they indicate the possibility of a pseudogene.

     Now that the mRNA is completely covered  by  the  set  of	alignments,  the
     boundaries  of  the alignments (there should be one alignment per exon now)
     are adjusted so that the alignments abut each other precisely and	so  that
     they  are adjacent to good splice donor and acceptor sites.  Most commonly,
     two adjacent exons' alignments overlap by as much as 20 or 30 base pairs on
     the mRNA sequence.  The true exon boundary may  lie  anywhere  within  this
     overlap, or (as we have seen empirically) even a few base pairs outside the
     overlap.	To  position  the  exon  boundaries, the overlap plus a few base
     pairs on each side is examined for splice donor sites, using functions that
     have different splice matrices depending on the organism chosen.	The  top
     few  splice  donor  sites (by score) are then evaluated as to how much they
     affect the original alignment boundaries.	The site that affects the bound-
     aries the least is chosen, and is evaluated as to the presence of an accep-
     tor site.	The alignments are truncated or extended as  necessary	so  that
     they terminate at the splice donor site and so that they do not overlap.

   Final result
     The  windows  are	examined carefully to get the percent identity per exon,
     the number of gaps per exon, the overall percent identity, the percent cov-
     erage of the mRNA, presence of an aligning or  non-aligning  poly(A)  tail,
     number  of  splice  donor sites and the presence or absence of splice donor
     and acceptor sites for each exon, and the occurrence of an mRNA that has  a
     5' or 3' end (or both) that does not align to the genomic sequence.  If the
     overall percent identity and percent length coverage are above the user-de-
     fined  cutoffs,  a  summary  report  is  printed, and, if requested, a text
     alignment showing identities and mismatches is also printed.

   Interspecies alignments
     spidey is capable of performing interspecies alignments.  The major differ-
     ence in interspecies alignments is that the mRNA-genomic identity will  not
     be  close to 100% as it is in intraspecies alignments; also, the alignments
     have numerous and lengthy gaps.  If spidey is used in its normal mode to do
     interspecies alignments, it produces gene models with many, many short  ex-
     ons.   When the interspecies flag is set, spidey uses different BLAST para-
     meters to encourage longer and more gaps and to not penalize as heavily for
     mismatches.  This way, the alignments for the exons  are  much  longer  and
     more closely approximate the actual gene structure.

   Extracting CDS alignments
     When  spidey  is run in network-aware mode or when ASN.1 files are used for
     the mRNA records, it is capable of extracting a CDS alignment from an  mRNA
     alignment	and  printing the CDS information also.  Since the CDS alignment
     is just a subset of the mRNA alignment, it is relatively straightforward to
     truncate the exon alignments as necessary and to generate a CDS  alignment.
     Furthermore, the untranslated regions are now defined, so the percent iden-
     tity for the 5' and 3' untranslated regions is also calculated.

OPTIONS
     A summary of options is included below.

     -	    Print usage message.

     -F N   Start of genomic interval desired (from; 0-based).

     -G     Input file is a GI list.

     -L N   The extra-large intron size to use (default = 220000).

     -M filename
	    File with donor splice matrix.

     -N filename
	    File with acceptor splice matrix.

     -R filename
	    File (including path) to repeat blast database for filtering.

     -S p/m
	    Restrict to plus (p) or minus (m) strand of genomic sequence.

     -T N   Stop of genomic interval desired (to; 0-based).

     -X     Use  extra-large  intron  sizes (increases the limit for initial and
	    terminal introns from 100kb to 240kb and for all others from 35kb to
	    120kb); may result in significantly longer compute times.

     -a filename
	    Output file for alignments when directed to  a  separate  file  with
	    -p 3 (default = spidey.aln).

     -c N   Identity cutoff, in percent, for quality control purposes.

     -d     Also  try  to align coding sequences corresponding to the given mRNA
	    records (may require network access).

     -e X   First-pass e-value (default  =  1.0e-10).	Higher	values	increase
	    speed at the cost of sensitivity.

     -f X   Second-pass e-value (default = 0.001).

     -g X   Third-pass e-value (default = 10).

     -i filename
	    Input file containing the genomic sequence in ASN.1 or FASTA format.
	    If	your  computer	is running on a network that can access GenBank,
	    you can substitute the desired accession number for the filename.

     -j     Print ASN.1 alignment?

     -k filename
	    File for ASN.1 output with -k (default = spidey.asn).

     -l N   Length coverage cutoff, in percent.

     -m filename
	    Input file containing the mRNA sequence(s) in ASN.1 or FASTA format,
	    or a list of their accessions (with -G).  If your computer	is  run-
	    ning on a network that can access GenBank, you can substitute a sin-
	    gle accession number for the filename.

     -n N   Number of gene models to return per input mRNA (default = 1).

     -o str
	    Main output file (default = stdout; contents controlled by -p).

     -p N   Print alignment?
	    0	   summary and alignments together (default)
	    1	   just the summary
	    2	   just the alignments
	    3	   summary and alignments in different files

     -r c/d/m/p/v
	    Organism of genomic sequence, used to determine splice matrices.
	    c	   C. elegans
	    d	   Drosophila
	    m	   Dictyostelium discoideum
	    p	   plant
	    v	   vertebrate (default)

     -s     Tune for interspecies alignments.

     -t filename
	    File with feature table, in 4 tab-delimited columns:
	    seqid  (e.g., NM_04377.1)
	    name   (only repetitive_region is currently supported)
	    start  (0-based)
	    stop   (0-based)

     -u     Make  a multiple alignment of all input mRNAs (which must overlap on
	    the genomic sequence).

     -w     Consider lowercase characters in input FASTA sequences to be masked.

AUTHOR
     Sarah Wheelan and others at the National Center for Biotechnology	Informa-
     tion; Steffen Moeller contributed to this documentation.

SEE ALSO
     <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/spidey>

NCBI				   2005-01-25			       SPIDEY(1)

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