EVALUATION OF THE EXON PREDICTIONS OF THE GRAIL SOFTWARE

Identification of transcribed sequences within genomic regions has bee n a major rate-limiting step in the pursuit of genes. We have tested t he ability of GRAIL 1 and GRAIL 2 to locate coding exons in the 41 lon gest human genomic sequences available in release 38 of the EMBL datab ase. Of the total annotated exons GRAIL 1 correctly identified 68% of coding exons. GRAIL 2 correctly identified 71%. Of the 686 predictions made by GRAIL 1, 46.4% did not correspond to an annotated exon. The c orresponding figures for GRAIL 2 were 556 and 30.5%. The GRAIL 2 softw are predicted as excellent a significantly higher proportion of the co ding exons than did GRAIL 1, and also gave a significantly lower figur e for false predictions. GRAIL 2 thus represents a significant improve ment over GRAIL 1. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.