What is the difference b/w Ultra Conserved Elements (UCE) and orthologs

Question

[sunnykevin97]

HI,

Can someone give a good definition of the difference ?

Thanks

Answer 1

[Mensur Dlakic]

UCEs are short- and medium-sized stretches of DNA that are identical between different species. They are often non-coding.

Orthology refers always to coding sequences. It requires that function be conserved between different species, but there is no requirement for identical sequence.

While presumably there is a requirement for functional conservation in both cases, evolutionary pressure for sequence conservation is larger on UCEs than orthologs.

[sunnykevin97]

Well, Is their any tools (?) able to predict UCE's from genome data, with out knowing bait information.