Detecting apparent mutations in nucleic acid sequences

摘要

A target nucleic acid sequence information obtained from a biological sample can be compared against a collection of reference nucleic acid sequences. The target nucleic acid sequence is aligned or matched against the reference sequences, wherein some of the target sequences have one or more polymorphisms. Different collections of reference sequences are created and used depending on what one is trying to determine about the target. For example, reference sequences associated with a particular disease may be stored in one or more databases and subsequently compared with a target sequence to determine whether a patient from which the sample sequence was obtained has that disease.