MAFFT online service: multiple sequence alignment, interactive sequence choice and visualization

• Published in: Briefings in bioinformatics Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 1160 - 1166
• Main Authors: Katoh, Kazutaka, Rozewicki, John, Yamada, Kazunori D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Oxford University Press 19.07.2019; Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Alignment; Computational Biology - methods; Databases, Genetic; Information processing; Internet; Nucleotide sequence; Sequence Alignment - methods; Sequence Alignment - statistics & numerical data; Sequence Analysis; Software; User-Computer Interface; phylogenetic tree; sequence analysis; multiple sequence alignment
• ISSN: 1467-5463; 1477-4054; 1477-4054
• DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbx108

Abstract This article describes several features in the MAFFT online service for multiple sequence alignment (MSA). As a result of recent advances in sequencing technologies, huge numbers of biological sequences are available and the need for MSAs with large numbers of sequences is increasing. To extract biologically relevant information from such data, sophistication of algorithms is necessary but not sufficient. Intuitive and interactive tools for experimental biologists to semiautomatically handle large data are becoming important. We are working on development of MAFFT toward these two directions. Here, we explain (i) the Web interface for recently developed options for large data and (ii) interactive usage to refine sequence data sets and MSAs.