THE CLUSTAL-X WINDOWS INTERFACE - FLEXIBLE STRATEGIES FOR MULTIPLE SEQUENCE ALIGNMENT AIDED BY QUALITY ANALYSIS TOOLS

CLUSTAL X is a new windows interface for the widely-used progressive m ultiple sequence alignment program CLUSTAL W, The new system is easy t o use, providing an integrated system for performing multiple sequence and profile alignments and analysing the results, CLUSTAL X displays the sequence alignment in a window on the screen, A versatile sequence colouring scheme allows the user to highlight conserved features in t he alignment, Pull-down menus provide all the options required for tra ditional multiple sequence and profile alignment, New features include : the ability to cut-and-paste sequences to change the order of the al ignment, selection of a subset of the sequences to be realigned, and s election of a sub-range of the alignment to be realigned and inserted back into the original alignment, Alignment quality analysis can be pe rformed and low-scoring segments or exceptional residues can be highli ghted, Quality analysis and realignment of selected residue ranges pro vide the user with a powerful tool to improve and refine difficult ali gnments and to trap errors in input sequences, CLUSTAL X has been comp iled on SUN Solaris, IRIX5.3 on Silicon Graphics, Digital UNIX on DECs tations, Microsoft Windows (32 bit) for PCs, Linux ELF for x86 PCs, an d Macintosh PowerMac.