The SEQANAL and SEQTALK programs: a new method of access to high-resolution nucleotide sequence comparison and analysis programs from a remote laboratory mini- or microcomputer.

A new method of access has been devised for biologists requiring the use of computer programs offering high-resolution analysis and comparison of nucleotide sequence data. The strategy involves the development of a pair of computer programs, called SEQANAL and SEQTALK, designed to operate in tandem. SEQANAL is a large and complex program intended to be used to discover regions of internal repeats and dyad symmetries within one sequence, or regions of homology, complementarity or optimal alignment between two sequences. Three algorithms are supported: those of Staden (1977, 1978); of Korn et al. (1977); Queen and Korn (1980); and the newly-described exhaustive tree-searching algorithm of Burnett et al. (1985, 1986). The SEQTALK program is a small, portable, interactive, front-end program with which the user can specify the instructions to control the SEQANAL program. Together, the SEQANAL and SEQTALK programs permit analyses to be performed at a remote facility on a mainframe computer under the complete control of a distant user equipped with minimal computing facilities, and without needing networking facilities.