Limitations of the Sensors

By definition, the sensors determine ``what is a gene'' by the scores they return. As we have currently designed the sensors, they will reject certain sequences which may be genes because they do not satisfy certain necessary criteria. The necessary criteria are:

Start and Stop

Each gene must begin with a start codon and end with a stop codon.

ORF

Each gene must have an open reading frame. Therefore, there may be no stop codon in the sequence before the actual one.

Length

Each gene must have a length which is defined to have a probability of occurence greater than 0.0. Sequences which are not an integer length of codons are invalid.

Overlaps

Genes on the same strand may not overlap.

Adjacents

Noncoding regions must have a length of at least one nucleotide between two genes (genes may not be adjacent).