GMAP: a multi-purpose computer program to aid synthetic gene design, cassette mutagenesis and the introduction of potential restriction sites into DNA sequences.

A computer program called GMAP has been developed for i) mapping the potential restriction endonuclease (R.E.) sites that can be introduced in a nonambiguous DNA sequence; ii) predicting the mutations required to introduce unique R.E. sites in the nonambiguous DNA sequences; and iii) searching all R.E. sites in ambiguous DNA sequence obtained by reverse translation of a given amino acid sequence. This allows the design of synthetic genes as well as the modular redesign after introducing limited base pair mismatches in wild-type genes in order to adapt them for "cassette" mutagenesis. The GMAP program uses an algorithm based on set theory that reduces the degree of complexity from an exponential to linear function of sequence length. Therefore, the speed of searching for potential R.E. sites in reverse-translated gene sequences and the prediction of new R.E. sites in natural genes by mutations are rapid.