A MACINTOSH PROGRAM FOR THE VERSATILE GENERATION OF RANDOM NUCLEIC-ACID SEQUENCES AND THEIR STRUCTURAL-ANALYSIS

The program 'MacStAn' for the Apple Macintosh generates random sequences and can analyze their tendency to form secondary structure or translation products as well as their mono-, di- and trinucleotide composition. Generation of random sequences is versatile in that one can (i) predefine the G + C content, maximal base repetitions and constant regions; (it) preset the entire dinucleotide composition; or (iii) shuffle an existing sequence. The program constitutes an integrated package with a graphical user interface, full-featured editing, saving, printing, text import and export, dot plot and sequence alignment.