MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput.
Journal: 2004/July - Nucleic Acids Research
ISSN: 1362-4962
Abstract:
We describe MUSCLE, a new computer program for creating multiple alignments of protein sequences. Elements of the algorithm include fast distance estimation using kmer counting, progressive alignment using a new profile function we call the log-expectation score, and refinement using tree-dependent restricted partitioning. The speed and accuracy of MUSCLE are compared with T-Coffee, MAFFT and CLUSTALW on four test sets of reference alignments: BAliBASE, SABmark, SMART and a new benchmark, PREFAB. MUSCLE achieves the highest, or joint highest, rank in accuracy on each of these sets. Without refinement, MUSCLE achieves average accuracy statistically indistinguishable from T-Coffee and MAFFT, and is the fastest of the tested methods for large numbers of sequences, aligning 5000 sequences of average length 350 in 7 min on a current desktop computer. The MUSCLE program, source code and PREFAB test data are freely available at http://www.drive5. com/muscle.
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Nucleic Acids Res 32(5): 1792-1797

MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput

195 Roque Moraes Drive, Mill Valley, CA 94941, USA
Email: moc.5evird@bob
Received 2004 Jan 19; Revised 2004 Jan 30; Accepted 2004 Feb 24.

Abstract

We describe MUSCLE, a new computer program for creating multiple alignments of protein sequences. Elements of the algorithm include fast distance estimation using kmer counting, progressive alignment using a new profile function we call the log-expectation score, and refinement using tree-dependent restricted partitioning. The speed and accuracy of MUSCLE are compared with T-Coffee, MAFFT and CLUSTALW on four test sets of reference alignments: BAliBASE, SABmark, SMART and a new benchmark, PREFAB. MUSCLE achieves the highest, or joint highest, rank in accuracy on each of these sets. Without refinement, MUSCLE achieves average accuracy statistically indistinguishable from T-Coffee and MAFFT, and is the fastest of the tested methods for large numbers of sequences, aligning 5000 sequences of average length 350 in 7 min on a current desktop computer. The MUSCLE program, source code and PREFAB test data are freely available at http://www.drive5.com/muscle.

Abstract

The average Q score for each method over all PREFAB alignments (All), and the total CPU time in seconds are given. The remaining columns show average Q scores on subsets in which the structure pairs fall within the given pairwise identity ranges. Note that T-Coffee required 10 CPU days to complete the test, compared with <5 h for MUSCLE and ∼30 min for MUSCLE-p.

Average Q and TC scores for each method on BAliBASE are shown, together with the total CPU time in seconds. Align-m aborted on two alignments; average scores on the remainder were Q = 0.852 and TC = 0.670, requiring 2202 s.

The average Q score for each method on each BAliBASE subset is shown. Ref1 is the largest subset with 81 test sets, comprising almost 60% of the database. Other subsets are smaller. For example, Ref4 and Ref5 have 12 alignments each, and there are large variances in the individual scores from which the averages are computed. In our opinion, it is not possible to draw meaningful conclusions about the relative performance of different methods on these subsets.

The average TC score for each method on each BAliBASE subset is shown.

The average APDB score of each method on the PREFAB reference alignments is given. There is no statistically significant difference between the four best methods. The top four are significantly better than FFTNS1 (MUSCLE-p > FFTNS1 with P = 0.009), and FFTNS1 is significantly better than CLUSTALW (P = 3 × 10).

All gives the average Q score over all SABmark alignments, Superfamily and Twilight are average Q scores on the two subsets. These are computed first by averaging Q for each pair in a single multiple alignment, then averaging over multiple alignments. This corrects for the lack of independence between pairs in a given multiple alignment. Align-m aborted in nine cases; quoted averages for this program are for completed alignments. Selected P-values are: MUSCLE > T-Coffee P = 0.14, MUSCLE > MUSCLE-p P = 4×10, MUSCLE > NWNSI P = 6 × 10, MUSCLE-p > NWNSI P = 0.03, T-Coffee > MUSCLE-p P = 0.1, T-Coffee > Align-m P < 10.

The average Q and TC accuracy scores over the 267 reference alignments in SMART that have no more than 100 sequences are given. The last column is the P-value of the difference between the method in a row and the method in the next row, measured on the Q score. The P-value for MUSCLE > T-Coffee is 0.0004 on Q and 0.01 on TC; the P-value for NSI > T-Coffee is 0.19 on Q and 0.0002 on TC. The difference between MUSCLE and NWNSI is only weakly significant on the Q score (P = 0.07) and is not significant on the TC score (P = 0.3).

Each entry in the table contains the P-value assigned by a Friedman rank test to the difference between a pair of methods. The upper-right corner of the matrix is obtained from Q scores on BAliBASE, the lower-left corner from Q scores on PREFAB. If the method to the left is ranked higher than the method above, the P-value is preceded by +. If the method to the left is ranked lower, the P-value is preceded by –. If the P-value is >0.05, the difference is not considered significant and is shown in parentheses. So, for example, MUSCLE ranks higher than T-Coffee on PREFAB with P = 0.0002 and MUSCLE-p higher than CLUSTALW on BAliBASE with P = 0.02.

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