CONTIG EXPLORER - INTERACTIVE MARKER-CONTENT MAP ASSEMBLY

In STS-content mapping of a region, multiple optimal or near-optimal p utative orders of markers exist, Determining which of the markers in t his region can be placed reliably on the physical map of the chromosom e and which markers lack sufficient evidence to be placed requires sof tware that facilitates exploratory sensitivity analysis and interactiv e reassembly with different subsets of the input data and that also as sists the evaluation of any arbitrary (user-specified) marker order. W e describe CONTIG EXPLORER, a package for interactive assembly of STS- content maps that provides the user with various ways of performing su ch analyses, thereby facilitating the design of laboratory experiments aimed at reducing ambiguity in STS order. We then compare the output of CONTIG EXPLORER with two other assembly programs, SEGMAP and CONTIG MAKER, for a region of chromosome 12p between 21 and 38 cM on the sex- averaged CEPH/Genethon linkage map. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.