Upcoming Ensembl Platform Transition

This is the final release of its kind on this website.

In summer 2026, this site will bring you to the new Ensembl platform currently at beta.ensembl.org.
Please bookmark this archive to retain access to the current site, tools and functionality until they are available on the new platform -> jun2026.archive.ensembl.org

Human vs American bison LastZ results

Human (Homo sapiens, GRCh38) and American bison (Bison bison bison, Bison_UMD1.0) were aligned using the LastZ alignment algorithm (LastZ) in Ensembl release 96. Human was used as the reference species. After running LastZ, the raw LastZ alignment blocks were chained according to their location in both genomes. During the final netting process, the best sub-chain was chosen in each region on the reference species.

Configuration parameters

ParameterValue
Gap open penalty (O)400
Gap extend penalty (E)30
HSP threshold (K)3000
Threshold for gapped extension (L)3000
Threshold for alignments between gapped alignment blocks (H)2200
Seed and Transition value (T)1
Scoring matrix (Q)
Default:
     A    C    G    T
    91 -114  -31 -123
  -114  100 -125  -31
   -31 -125  100 -114
  -123  -31 -114   91

Chunking parameters

ParameterHumanAmerican bison
Chunk size30,000,00010,100,000
Overlap0100,000
Group set size10,100,000
Masking options{default_soft_masking => 1}{default_soft_masking => 1}

Statistics over 2,345,509 alignment blocks

Genome coverage (bp) Coding exon coverage (bp)
Human

Uncovered: 1,642,783,830 out of 3,099,750,718
Covered: 1,456,966,888 out of 3,099,750,718

Uncovered: 1,787,883 out of 38,571,754
Matches: 29,997,517 out of 38,571,754
Mismatches: 6,336,085 out of 38,571,754
Insertions: 450,269 out of 38,571,754
Identity over aligned base-pairs: 81.6%

American bison

Uncovered: 1,594,994,730 out of 2,953,622,319
Covered: 1,358,627,589 out of 2,953,622,319

Uncovered: 1,665,243 out of 30,104,366
Matches: 24,544,086 out of 30,104,366
Mismatches: 3,786,423 out of 30,104,366
Insertions: 108,614 out of 30,104,366
Identity over aligned base-pairs: 86.3%

Block size distribution

Size range All 2,345,509 alignment blocks Blocks grouped in nets
# blocks Total size (incl. gaps) # nets Total size (incl. gaps)
1 bp - 10 bp
78,817
526.5 kb
10 bp - 100 bp
278,899
13.8 Mb
17,666
1.2 Mb
100 bp - 1 kb
1,509,052
670.5 Mb
70,083
26.7 Mb
1 kb - 10 kb
478,416
843.0 Mb
29,318
81.4 Mb
10 kb - 100 kb
323
4.8 Mb
3,696
78.2 Mb
100 kb - 1 Mb
2
202.0 kb
420
164.4 Mb
1 Mb - 10 Mb
376
1.1 Gb
10 Mb - 100 Mb
6
91.4 Mb