Columbia Technology Ventures
Lead Inventor: Dimitris Anastassiou, PhD

Nucleotide Variations Difficult to See:
DNA has a very complex structure. Consequently, the demand for technology that can process biological information is growing. Existing bioinformatics research focuses on analysis of DNA sequences and various measurements taken at the protein, RNA transcript and DNA level. Currently, there is software available to visualize and edit nucleotide sequences, align oligonucleotides, perform restriction analysis, pattern searching. However, it remains difficult to ascertain variation in nucleotide sequences due to a lack of visual fidelity.

Colors Give Visual Distinction to Nucleotide Sequences:
Use of spectral analysis and image processing in analyzing DNA sequences of specific structures is a novel approach to identifying genomic features. This technology is a software program that provides a choice of colors to give a better distinction between types of nucleotides and offers the ability to zoom in and out to arbitrary frequency and sequence resolutions. It also extends the framework to visualize long DNA sequences and help in identifying patterns that are visible at high resolution of DNA spectral images. These spectrograms illustrate large and small-scale properties of DNA such as protein coding, repeat regions, nucleotide content and various structural properties of the DNA itself.

Applications:
• Gives simultaneous view of the local frequency content throughout the sequence for all frequencies
• Local relative nucleotide content is indicated by the color of the spectrogram
• Identifies genes and other regions of known biological significance
• Highlights strong frequencies in DNA sequences
• Reveals the well-known 3-base periodicity

Advantages:
• Easy to use
• Shows repeat regions of any complexity
• Works in the frequency domain
• Aids the discovery of potentially significant unknown regions

Patent Status: Copyright

Licensing Status: Available for Licensing and Sponsored Research Support