Hi Albert,

Your question has generated a bit of discussion here - so much that we 
felt it was necessary to be clearer when explaining what the alignment 
display exactly represents. The change to the Help document is not 
published yet, but this is a draft of what we will be amending. If you 
have any questions or input, we would welcome the feedback.

Jennifer

---- draft help for psl display ----
Pat space layout (PSL) alignment tracks: Aligning regions (usually exons 
when the query is cDNA) are shown as black blocks. In dense display 
mode, the degree of darkness corresponds to the number of features 
aligning to the region or the degree of quality of the match. In pack or 
full display mode, the aligning regions are connected by lines 
representing gaps in the alignment (typically spliced-out introns), with 
arrowheads indicating the orientation of the alignment, pointing right 
if the query sequence was aligned to the forward strand of the genome 
and left if aligned to the reverse strand. Two parallel lines are drawn 
over double-sided alignment gaps, which skip over unalignable sequence 
in both target and query. For alignments of ESTs, the arrows may be 
reversed to show the apparent direction of transcription deduced from 
splice junction sequences. In situations where no gap lines are visible, 
the arrowheads are displayed on the block itself. To prevent display 
problems, the Genome Browser imposes an upper limit on the number of 
alignments that can be viewed simultaneously within the tracks image. 
When this limit is exceeded, the Browser displays the best several 
hundred alignments in a condensed display mode, then lists the number of 
undisplayed alignments in the last row of the track. In this situation, 
try zooming in to display more entries or to return the track to full 
display mode. For some PSL tracks, extra coloring to indicate 
mismatching bases and query-only gaps may be available.
---------------------


---------------------------------
Jennifer Jackson
UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group
http://genome.ucsc.edu/

On 2/17/10 7:19 AM, Albert Vilella wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In displaying blat results, what is the difference between an arrow
> that links two matches and a squared arrow?
>
> for example, in an image like this (also attached):
> http://genome.ucsc.edu/trash/hgt/hgt_genome_7c20_c07d60.gif
>
> there is first left-hand side block of 7 matching sequences that is
> linked by arrows, then squared links for the first 3, then the fourth
> is an arrow, and the last 3 are squared links... etc
>
> what is the conceptual difference between arrows and squared links?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Albert.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Genome maillist  -  [email protected]
> https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome
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https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome

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