An overview of multiple sequence alignment.

Multiple sequence alignment is perhaps the most commonly applied bioinformatics technique. It often leads to fundamental biological insight into sequence-structure-function relationships of nucleotide or protein sequence families. In this unit, an overview of multiple sequence alignment techniques is presented, covering a history of nearly 30 years from the early pioneering methods to the current state-of-the-art techniques. Methodological and biological issues and end-user considerations, as well as alignment evaluation issues, are discussed.