User:Josiasseb/sandbox

This section is to be added to the multiple sequence alignment article.

Phylogeny-aware methods
Most multiple sequence alignment methods try to minimize the number of insertions/deletions (gaps) and, as a consequence, produce compact alignments. This causes several problems if sequences to align contain non-homologous regions, if gaps are informative in a phylogeny analysis. These problems are common in newly produced sequences that are poorly annotated and may contain frame-shifts, wrong domains or non-homologous spliced exons.

First of such methods started to be developed in 2005 by L&ouml;ytynoja and Goldman. The same authors released a software called PRANK in 2008. PRANK improves alignments when insertions are present. Nevertheless, it runs slowly compared to progressive and/or iterative methods developed for several years.

In 2012, two new phylogeny-aware tools appeared. One is PAGAN developed by the same team than PRANK. The other is ProGraphMSA developed by Szalkowski. Both were developed independently but share common features, notably the use of graph algorithms to improve the recognition of non-homologous regions, and an improvement in code making these software faster than PRANK.