RepeatRunner: 
Overview
RepeatRunner is a CGL-based program that integrates RepeatMasker with BLASTX to provide a comprehensive means of identifying repetitive elements. Because RepeatMasker identifies repeats by means of similarity to a nucleotide library of known repeats, it often fails to identify highly divergent repeats and divergent portions of repeats, especially near repeat edges. To remedy this problem, RepeatRunner uses BLASTX to search a database of repeat encoded proteins (reverse transcriptases, gag, env, etc...). Because protein homologies can be detected across larger phylogenetic distances than nucleotide similarities, this BLASTX search allows RepeatRunner to identify divergent protein coding portions of retro-elements and retro-viruses not detected by RepeatMasker. RepeatRunner merges its BLASTX and RepeatMasker results to produce a single, comprehensive XML-based output. It also masks the input sequence appropriately. In practice RepeatRunner has been shown to greatly improve the efficacy of repeat identifcation1. RepeatRunner can also be used in conjunction with PILER-DF - a program designed to identify novel repeats - and RepeatMasker to produce a comprehensive system for repeat identification, characterization, and masking in the newly sequenced genomes.
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Author: myandell at genetics dot utah dot edu
Current Maintainer: barry dot moore at genetics dot utah dot edu