Candidates in astroviruses, seadornaviruses, cytorhabdoviruses and coronaviruses for +1 frame overlapping genes accessed by leaky scanning

Abstract

Background. Overlapping genes are common in RNA viruses where they serve as a mechanism to optimize the coding potential of compact genomes. However, annotation of overlapping genes can be difficult using conventional gene-finding software. Recently we have been using a number of complementary approaches to systematically identify previously undetected overlapping genes in RNA virus genomes. In this article we gather together a number of promising candidate new overlapping genes that may be of interest to the community. Results. Overlapping gene predictions are presented for the astroviruses, seadornaviruses, cytorhabdoviruses and coronaviruses (families Astroviridae, Reoviridae, Rhabdoviridae and Coronaviridae, respectively). © 2010 Firth and Atkins; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.