In bioinformatics, a sequence alignment is a way of arranging the sequences of DNA, RNA, or protein to identify regions of similarity that may be a consequence of functional, structural, or evolutionary relationships between the sequences. Aligned sequences of nucleotide or amino acid residues are typically represented as rows within a matrix. Gaps are inserted between the residues so that identical or similar characters are aligned in successive columns.
Sequence alignments are also used for non-biological sequences, such as those present in natural language or in financial data.
Read more about Sequence Alignment: Interpretation, Alignment Methods, Representations, Global and Local Alignments, Pairwise Alignment, Multiple Sequence Alignment, Structural Alignment, Phylogenetic Analysis, Other Biological Uses, Non-biological Uses, Software
Famous quotes containing the word sequence:
“Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography.... For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form—it may be called fleeting or eternal—is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)