Combination of results from gene-finding programs

Abstract: Gene-finding programs available over the Internet today are shown to be nothing more than guides to possible coding regions in the DNA. The programs often do incorrect predictions. The idea of combining a number of different gene-finding programs arised a couple of years ago. Murakami and Takagi (1998) published one of the first attempts to combine results from gene-finding programs built on different techniques (e.g. artificial neural networks and hidden Markov models). The simple combinations methods used by Murakami and Takagi (1998) indicated that the prediction accuracy could be improved by a combination of programs. In this project artificial neural networks are used to combine the results of the three well-known gene-finding programs GRAILII, FEXH, and GENSCAN. The results show a considerable increase in prediction accuracy compared to the best performing single program GENSCAN