Alignment

How it is used

Used in bioinformatics every day. Read alignment, also called mapping, is the first step of most NGS pipelines, with tools such as BWA or Bowtie; the output is a BAM file. A multiple sequence alignment compares many sequences, for example to build a phylogenetic tree.

Example sentences

1. The alignment step took six hours for each genome.

2. A multiple sequence alignment showed that this region is conserved from fish to humans.

Common collocations

• read alignment
• sequence alignment
• multiple sequence alignment
• alignment file (BAM)
• alignment rate

Related terms

• readIn sequencing, a single DNA sequence that the machine produces from one fragment. A sequencing run produces millions of reads.
• reference genomeA standard, high-quality genome sequence for a species that researchers use as a common map when aligning reads and describing variants.
• BLASTBasic Local Alignment Search Tool: a widely used program that compares a DNA or protein sequence with large databases to find similar sequences.
• phylogenetic treeA branching diagram that shows how species, genes or virus strains are related through evolution, based on the similarities and differences in their sequences.
• pipelineA series of connected software steps that process data automatically, for example from raw sequencing reads to a final list of annotated variants.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• alignment · Software Engineering
• alignment · Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
• alignment · UX/UI Design
• alignment · Product Management
• alignment · Management & Leadership
• alignment · Graphic Design

More terms: Bioinformatics

• bioinformatics
• variant calling
• annotation
• FASTQ
• accession number