About PSPE

PSPE is a computational tool specifically designed for simulating evolution of non-coding DNA sequences, in particular promoter sequences. PSPE, like other simulation tools, can use many different DNA substitution models and Insertion/Deletion models to simulate sequence evolution. What makes PSPE unique is that PSPE can perform sequence evolution under a set of user-specified functional constraints, e.g., GC contents, functional site locations, and distances between functional sites, which makes simulation more realistic. In addition, PSPE can, using a Poisson process for branching and a Exponential model for branch length, generate a random evolutionary tree of different topologies. The outputs of PSPE include simulated sequences, the alignment of sequences, and the location map of functional sites in each sequence. PSPE is a useful tool for studying evolution mechanisms and for evaluating alignment tools as well.

Availability and Citing

PSPE for Linux (include executable files for both 32 and 64 bits systems)

Please use the following commands to extract files from the compressed file: tar xvfj PSPE-Linu-Bin.tar.bz2, then follow the instructions in the README file for installation and usage.

PSPE should be cited as
Weichun Huang, Joseph R Nevins, and Uwe Ohler,Phylogenetic simulation of promoter evolution: estimation and modelling of binding site turnover events and assessing their impact on alignment tools, Genome Biology, Vol 8 (10) 2007

Data and Results

Simulation of Promoter Evolution

TFBS PWM for evolution simulation

Supplementary Data and Results

TFBS detection accuracy of turnover sites in aligning five mammal species

Additional results on MSA tool evaluation

Note: all above files for download are in *.tar.gz format (use command 'tar xfz afile.tar.gz' to extract files). If you would like to have other data or programs used in our paper, please feel free to contact me.

Authors

PSPE was developed by Weichun Huang in collaboration with Uwe Ohler and Joseph R. Nevins.