Dot plot (bioinformatics)

This article is about the biological sequences comparison plot. For the statistical plot, see Dot plot (statistics).
A DNA dot plot of a human zinc finger transcription factor (GenBank ID NM_002383), showing regional self-similarity. The main diagonal represents the sequence's alignment with itself; lines off the main diagonal represent similar or repetitive patterns within the sequence.

In bioinformatics a dot plot is a graphical method for comparing two biological sequences and identifying regions of close similarity after sequence alignment. It is a type of recurrence plot.