Statistical mechanical simulation of polymeric DNA melting with MELTSIM

Motivation: MELTSIM is a windows-based statistical mechanical program for s imulating melting curves of DNAs of known sequence and genomic dimensions u nder different conditions of ionic strength with great accuracy: The progra m is useful for mapping variations of base compositions of sequences, condu cting studies of denaturation, establishing appropriate conditions for hybr idization and renaturation, determinations of sequence complexity, and sequ ence divergence. Results: Good agreement is achieved between experimental and calculated mel ting curves of plasmid bacterial, yeast and human DNAs. Denaturation maps t hat accompany the calculated curves indicate non-coding regions have a sign ificantly lower (G+C) composition than coding regions in all species examin ed. Curves of partially sequenced human DNA suggest the current database ma y be heavily biased with coding regions, and excluding large (A+T)-rich ele ments.