Akihiro Oda[1]
Minoru Kanehisa[2]
[1] Information System Department
Molecular Biology Research Department
Nippon Shinyaku Co., LTD.
Nishiohji-hachijyo, Minami-ku Kyoto 601, Japan
[2] Institute for Chemical Research
Kyoto University
Uji Kyoto 611, Japan
Computational methods are indispensable tools for researchers who
determine
a new nucleic acid or protein sequence. Such methods are used to obtain
informaion to help identify and annotate the new sequence. Database searching
is currrently the most popular way to get this information. Using homology-
search programs such as FASTA or BLAST, one can search a database for sequences similar to
a given query sequence. In addition, the alignment of multiple nucleotide or
amino acid sequences is important for drawing phylogenetic trees and for
predicting the structure of proteins. The multiple sequence alignment of
proteins is also
used to discover motifs and biologically important patterns.
We have developed a retrieval system for nucleic acid and/or protein
sequences. The system is an Xtpanel application that runs on Sun Workstations
with the X-Window system. Xtpanel, which is written by Steve Cole and Dave
Nichols of Stanford University, allows one to build interactive X-Window
system interfaces
without having to do conventional
X programming.
It supports FASTA and BLAST for homology searches, bfind and bget for
database entry retrievals, and CLUSTAL V for multiple sequence alignments.