Contig

thumb|Overlapping reads from paired-end sequencing form contigs; contigs and gaps of known length form Scaffolding (bioinformatics)|scaffolds.A contig (from contiguous) is a set of overlapping DNA segments that together represent a consensus region of DNA. In bottom-up sequencing projects, a contig refers to overlapping sequence data (reads); in top-down sequencing projects, contig refers to the overlapping clones that form a physical map of the genome that is used to guide sequencing and assembly. Contigs can thus refer both to overlapping DNA sequences and to overlapping physical segments (f