Figmop: a profile HMM to identify genes and bypass troublesome gene models in draft genomes

MOTIVATION Gene models from draft genome assemblies of metazoan species are often incorrect, missing exons or entire genes, particularly for large gene families. Consequently, labour-intensive manual curation is often necessary. We present Figmop (Finding Genes using Motif Patterns) to help with the manual curation of gene families in draft genome assemblies. The program uses a pattern of short sequence motifs to identify putative genes directly from the genome sequence. Using a large gene family as a test case, Figmop was found to be more sensitive and specific than a BLAST-based approach. The visualization used allows the validation of potential genes to be carried out quickly and easily, saving hours if not days from an analysis. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION Source code of Figmop is freely available for download at https://github.com/dave-the-scientist, implemented in C and Python and is supported on Linux, Unix and MacOSX. CONTACT [email protected] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.