Spreadsheet-Based Program for Alignment of Overlapping DNA Sequences

• Published in: BioTechniques Vol. 26; no. 6; pp. 1180 - 1185
• Main Authors: Anbazhagan, Ramaswamy, Gabrielson, Edward
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Natick, MA Future Science Ltd 01.06.1999; Eaton; Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Base Sequence; Biological and medical sciences; Cloning, Molecular; Diverse techniques; DNA - analysis; DNA Primers; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; Mathematics in biology. Statistical analysis. Models. Metrology. Data processing in biology (general aspects); Molecular and cellular biology; Molecular Sequence Data; Sequence Analysis, DNA - methods; Software; User-Computer Interface; Computer science; Alignment; Spreadsheet; Software; Overlap; Nucleotide sequence
• ISSN: 0736-6205; 1940-9818
• DOI: 10.2144/99266bc04

Molecular biology laboratories frequently face the challenge of aligning small overlapping DNA sequences derived from a long DNA segment. Here, we present a short program that can be used to adapt Excel spreadsheets as a tool for aligning DNA sequences, regardless of their orientation. The program runs on any Windows or Macintosh operating system computer with Excel 97 or Excel 98. The program is available for use as an Excel file, which can be downloaded from the BioTechniques Web site. Upon execution, the program opens a specially designed customized workbook and is capable of identifying overlapping regions between two sequence fragments and displaying the sequence alignment. It also performs a number of specialized functions such as recognition of restriction enzyme cutting sites and CpG island mapping without costly specialized software.