Talk:Indel

Definition of Microindel
I believe the definition of "microindel" here is misleading. This article suggests that microindel is specifically defined as an indel ranging from 1-50bp in size:

This is not a general rule. The reference it goes back to self-defines "microindel" in this way:

As the source article states, they are defining the terms "indel" and "microindel" in particular ways for the sake of that article.

The reason I bring this up is because recently I have been considering the use of the term "microindels" to refer to the set of microdeletions and microduplications (or "microinsertions" if you will) in a genome. In the genome sequencing and medical genetics world, a microdeletion can be up to 50Mb in size, so it seems inconsistent with the definition of "microindel" presented in this article, which appears to be solely based on this one source. A source that was not attempting to define the term for all fields, but for the particular article within which the term was being used.

In the sequencing world, at least, "indel" is common shorthand for "small indel" or "short indel", which would be generally defined as an insertion or deletion from 0-50bp or 0-100bp in size. "Microdeletion" and "microduplication" are referring to larger events--commonly thought of as at least tens of kilobases in size, and ranging well into the megabase range. Therefore, in this community at least, a "microindel" seems to logically follow the definition of a larger insertion or deletion.

That said, I have difficulty coming up with a source defining the term "microindel" in this way. I would therefore suggest that at the very least this article be changed to reflect that the definition given for "microindel" was particular to that study, e.g. "Gonzalez et al., 2007 defined microindel as "an indel that results in a net gain or loss of from 1 to 50 nucleotides."

Mjatucla (talk) 18:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Needs Updating
I think the information presented here is a bit out of date. The article states: "The term "indel" has been co-opted in recent years by genome scientists for use in the sense described above." I would argue that in the past five years, not only has "indel" been co-opted, but it is now more commonly used to refer to one of the following:
 * 1) An insertion or deletion detected by array CGH, commonly in the hundreds of kilobases to megabases in size.
 * 2) A small insertion or deletion detected by next generation sequencing.

Mjatucla (talk) 18:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

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