Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index In shotgun DNA sequencing projects, a contig (from contiguous) is a set of overlapping DNA segments derived from a single genetic source. A contig in this sense can be used to deduce the original DNA sequence of the source. This meaning of contig is in accordance with the original definition by Staden [1979]. A contig map depicts the relative order of a linked library of contigs representing a complete chromosome segment. Semantic drift The word contig is sometimes used to refer to one segment of a contig in the original sense. A contig is also sometimes defined as the DNA sequence reconstructed from a set of overlapping DNA segments. Reference Staden,R. "A strategy of DNA sequencing employing computer programs", Nucleic Acids Res. 7, 2601-2610, 1979). This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.