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PROGRAM:
NAME
sigma - Simple greedy multiple alignment of non-coding DNA sequences
SYNOPSIS
sigma [options] [inputfile.fasta] [inputfile2.fasta ...]
Each fasta file may contain a single sequence or multiple sequences; all sequences will be
aligned together.
DESCRIPTION
Sigma ("Simple greedy multiple alignment") is an alignment program with a new algorithm
and scoring scheme designed specifically for non-coding DNA sequence. It uses a strategy
of seeking the best possible gapless local alignments, at each step making the best
possible alignment consistent with existing alignments, and scores the significance of the
alignment based on the lengths of the aligned fragments and a background model which may
be supplied or estimated from an auxiliary file of intergenic DNA. With real data, while
"correctness" can't be directly quantified for the alignment, running the PhyloGibbs motif
finder on pre-aligned sequence suggests that Sigma's alignments are superior.
OPTIONS
-A --aligned_output
Aligned, pretty-printed output (compare with -F option) (default: only this). See also
-C.
-b --bgprobfile filename
Auxiliary file (in fasta format) from which to read background sequences (overridden by
-B). Typically this is a file containing large quantities of similar non-coding
sequence, from which background probabilities of single- and di-nucleotides may be
estimated.
-B --bgseqfile filename
File containing background probabilities. The format is described further below.
-C --caps_only
Use only upper-case letters in output sequence, for compatibility with output of some
other programs like ClustalW and MLagan. By default, output is mixed-case (as in
Dialign), and lower-case bases are treated as not aligned.
-F --fasta_output
Multi-fasta output (can use both -A and -F in either order). See also -C.
-n --ncorrel number
Background correlation (default 2=dinucleotide; 1=single-site basecounts, 0=0.25 per
base).
-x, --significance number
Set limit for how probable the match is by chance (default 0.002, smaller=more
stringent).
-h, --help
Displays this list of options.
MORE HELP
The "significance" parameter (-x) determines whether local alignments are accepted or
rejected. The default at present is 0.002. Experiments on synthetic data (described in the
paper) suggest that 0.002 is about the threshold where sigma fails to align
phylogenetically-unrelated data that has moderate (yeast-like) dinucleotide correlation.
Using a “background model” appropriate to the sequences being aligned greatly reduces
spurious alignments on synthetic data (and, one hopes, on real data too). The simplest way
to ensure this is to supply, via the -b parameter, a FASTA-format file containing large
quantities of similar sequence data (eg, if one is aligning yeast sequences, supply a file
containing all intergenic yeast sequence).
Instead of this, if the single-site and dinucleotide frequencies are known already, they
may be supplied in a file via the -B option. The file format should be: one entry per
line, with the mononucleotide or dinucleotide (case-insensitive) followed by the
frequency. (eg, "A 0.3", "AT 0.16", etc on successive lines.) A sample file is in the
"Background" subdirectory of the source distribution (on Debian systems, this file can be
found in the /usr/share/doc/sigma-align/Background directory). A file like
"yeast.nc.3.freq" in the "tests" subdirectory of the MEME source distribution works fine
(trinucleotide counts are ignored).
REFERENCE
Please cite Sigma: Rahul Siddharthan (2006) Multiple alignment of weakly-conserved
non-coding DNA sequence BMC Bioinformatics 2006, 7:143 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-7-143
Published 16 March 2006, available online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/7/143/
AUTHORS
Rahul Siddharthan <[email protected]>
Wrote sigma. If you're using Sigma for actual research, please let the author know so
that he can alert you of bugfixes or new releases.
Charles Plessy <[email protected]>
Wrote the manpage in DocBook XML for the Debian distribution.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2006-2007 Rahul Siddharthan
Copyright © 2006-2007 Charles Plessy
Sigma is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the
GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.
On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in
/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.
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