RNAVIZ, A PROGRAM FOR THE VISUALIZATION OF RNA SECONDARY STRUCTURE

RnaViz is a user-friendly, portable, windows-type program for producin g publication-quality secondary structure drawings of RNA molecules. D rawings can be created starting from DCSE alignment files if they inco rporate structure information or from mfold ct files. The layout of a structure can be changed easily. Display of special structural element s such as pseudo-knots or unformatted areas is possible. Sequences can be automatically numbered, and several other types of labels can be u sed to annotate particular bases or areas, Although the program does n ot try to produce an initially non-overlapping drawing, the layout of a properly positioned structure drawing can be applied to a newly crea ted drawing using skeleton files. In this way a range of similar struc tures can be drawn with a minimum of effort. Skeletons for several typ es of RNA molecule are included with the program.