title: Blasted cell line names.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  While trying to integrate multiple data sets collected by different researchers, we noticed that the sample names were frequently entered inconsistently. Most of the variations appeared to involve punctuation, white space, or their absence, at the juncture between alphabetic and numeric portions of the cell line name.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Reasoning that the variant names could be described in terms of mutations or deletions of character strings, we implemented a simple version of the Needleman-Wunsch global sequence alignment algorithm and applied it to the cell line names. All correct matches were found by this procedure. Incorrect matches only occured when a cell line was present in one data set but not in the other. The raw match scores tended to be substantially worse for the incorrect matches.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A simple application of the Needleman-Wunsch global sequence alignment algorithm provides a useful first pass at matching sample names from different data sets.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Lauren A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Byers
authors.forename: John S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Yordy
authors.forename: Wenbin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Keith A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Baggerly
authors.forename: Uma
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Giri
authors.forename: Jeffrey N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Myers
authors.forename: K Kian
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Ang
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Story
authors.forename: Luc
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Girard
authors.forename: John D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Minna
authors.forename: John V
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Heymach
authors.forename: Kevin R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Coombes