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; (ii) 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.