Segway: a way to segment the genome

March 19, 2012 2:32 PM

Segway: a way to segment the genome
The free Segway software package contains a novel method for analyzing multiple tracks of functional genomics data. Our method uses a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) model, which enables it to analyze the entire genome at 1-bp resolution even in the face of heterogeneous patterns of missing data. This method is the first application of DBN techniques to genome-scale data and the first genomic segmentation method designed for use with the maximum resolution data available from ChIP-seq experiments without downsampling. Our software has extensive documentation and was designed from the outset with external users in mind. Researchers at other universities and institutes have already installed and used Segway for their own projects.

Role: designer, programmer, scientist

posted by grouse (3 comments total)

Woo! Go grouse! I understand *just* enough of this that it seems like a cool thing, but not enough to have a coherent idea of where one might want to use it. Is there any way you could try to explain what this does and what it's for such that this undergrad can understand it?
posted by Scientist at 4:51 PM on March 19, 2012

Yes, it's all fun and games until someone drives the Segway over a cl— wait, that was some other kind of Segway? Never mind, then.

Seriously: Go grouse!
posted by ubiquity at 7:46 AM on March 21, 2012

Scientist, you can read about its use in our paper in Nature Methods. Basically, if you can collect multiple kinds of measurements at every position of the genome (say, how often that position is in open chromatin, or whether it tends to be close to a certain transcription factor protein), you can use this software to find patterns in those measurements. Those patterns, in turn, seem to match up with known structures in the genome like genes or repressed regions.
posted by grouse at 4:02 PM on March 29, 2012