基因识别，是生物信息学的一个重要分支，使用生物学实验或计算机等手段识别DNA串行上的具有生物学特征的片段。基因识别的对象主要是蛋白质编码基因，也包括其他具有一定生物学功能的因子，如RNA基因和调控因子。基因识别是基因组研究的基础。

在早期，基因识别的主要手段是基于活的细胞或生物的实验。通过对若干种不同基因的同源重组的速率的统计分析，我们能够获知它们在染色体上的顺序。若进行大量类似的分析，我们可以确定各个基因的大致位置。现在，由于人类已经获得了巨大数量的基因组信息，依靠较慢的实验分析已不能满足基因识别的需要，而基于计算机算法的基因识别得到了长足的发展，成为了基因识别的主要手段。

GeneMark is a generic name for a family of ab initio gene prediction programs developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Developed in 1993, original GeneMark was used in 1995 as a primary gene prediction tool for annotation of the first completely sequenced bacterial genome of Haemophilus influenzae, and in 1996 for the first archaeal genome of Methanococcus jannaschii. The algorithm introduced inhomogeneous three-periodic Markov chain models of protein-coding DNA sequence that became standard in gene prediction as well as Bayesian approach to gene prediction in two DNA strands simultaneously. Species specific parameters of the models were estimated from training sets of sequences of known type (protein-coding and non-coding). The major step of the algorithm computes for a given DNA fragment posterior probabilities of either being "protein-coding" (carrying genetic code) in each of six possible reading frames (including three frames in complementary DNA strand) or being "non-coding". Original GeneMark (developed before the HMM era in Bioinformatics) is an HMM-like algorithm; it can be viewed as approximation to known in the HMM theory posterior decoding algorithm for appropriately defined HMM.