ClustalG: Software for analysis of activities and sequential events

Abstract

The paper describes a new software package for sequence alignment analysis called ClustalG. The package is a rewrite of the well-known Clustal series of alignment packages. The main new feature of ClustalG is the recognition of input word sequences of up to six characters. This effectively eliminates the 20 l tter constraint implmented in biological software on the number of event categories available to the researcher. The essential ClustalG windows are shown and the meaning of the most common variable settings are discussed. Some elementary alignments and clustering trees are illustrated. The software package including the help file and a number of time use sample files is freely available to any user from the St. Mary’s University ftp site. Key words: activity patterns sequence alignment software Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the original work on the Clustal program group by Des Higgins and Paul Sharp, and we thank Toby Gibson of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory for agreeing to allow us to redesign the program for use outside molecular biological applications. Their work represents a huge investment of research funds and talent that will now be applied to subjects far beyond those for which Clustal was originally designed.