WHAT IS ABACUS?
ABaCUS is a no-frills program developed to investigate the significance of
the putative correspondence between exons and units of protein structure.
This type of analysis takes the form of an attempt to eliminate the
reference hypothesis (sometimes called a "null" hypothesis) that no
correspondence exists. A reference hypothesis in this case consists of a
reference model for random gene structures, and a scoring rule for
quantifying correspondences.
ABaCUS creates and reads files containing observed data supplied by the
user, then uses this information to generate reference genes according to
one of several available models. The observed and reference genes are then
scored according to a correspondence rule designated by the user, and the
scores are compared in order to determine whether the reference hypothesis
(i.e., no correspondence) can be rejected.
This program may be useful in your research if you are studying the origin
and evolution of intron-containing genes.
This is the porting for AMIGA, and has been compiled with SAS-C V6.51.
To run simply open a SHELL and type ABACUS, for infos on using ABACUS
read the manual ABACUS.HLP. This archive includes also a PDB file for
a tutorial: a cytochrome C from rice embryos (read the manual).
Thanx to
Dr. Arlin Stoltzfus and Dr. David Spencer
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Dalhousie University
for this excellent tool.
Steve Peruzzi
peru@maya.dei.unipd.it
University of Padua, ITALY
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