Nucleic acid sequence analysis software packages.

Software packages have made sequence analysis easier and more accessible to research scientists in many fields. The majority of these packages are routinely upgraded to include improved and innovative programs for primer design, sequence assembly and improvements in database searching programs. The interfaces of many packages have also been improved, greatly facilitating their use. In the future, researchers can expect to be able to access a growing number of network applications (e.g. database searching and exon prediction programs) from within software packages, making them accessible in familiar formats. Increased network access from within software packages will also make more databases, and more frequently updated databases, available to a larger research community.