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LALIGN/PLALIGN(1)	     General Commands Manual	       LALIGN/PLALIGN(1)

NAME
     lalign - compare two protein or DNA sequences for local similarity and show
     the local sequence alignments

     plalign,flalign  -  compare two sequences for local similarity and plot the
     local sequence alignments

SYNOPSIS
     lalign [-EKfgiImnNOQqrRswxZ] sequence-file-1 sequence-file-2
     plalign [-EKfgiImnNQqrRsvwxZ] sequence-file-1 sequence-file-2

DESCRIPTION
     lalign and plalign programs compare two sequences	looking  for  local  se-
     quence  similarities.  lalign/plalign use code developed by X. Huang and W.
     Miller (Adv. Appl. Math. (1991) 12:337-357) for the "sim"	program.   (Ver-
     sion 2.1 uses sim2 code.) While ssearch reports only the best alignment be-
     tween  the query sequence and the library sequence, lalign and plalign will
     report all the alignments with pair-wisse probabilities  <  0.05  (default,
     modified with -E #) between the two sequences lalign shows the actual local
     alignments  between  the two sequences and their scores, while plalign pro-
     duces a plot of the alignments that looks similar to a `dot-matrix'  homol-
     ogy plot.	On Unixtm systems, plalign generates postscript output.  flalign
     generates graphic commands for the GCG "figure" program.

     Probability  estimates for the lalign/plalign/flalign programs are based on
     the  parameters  provided	by  Altschul  and  Gish  (1996)  Meth.	Enzymol.
     266:460-480.   These  parameters  are available for BLOSUM50, BLOSUM62, and
     PAM250 scoring matrices with specific gap penalties, and also for DNA  com-
     parison  with  a  gap  penalty  of  -16, -4.  Probability estimates are not
     available for other scoring matrices and gap penalties.

     The E(10,000) values reported with the alignments are  the  pairwise-align-
     ment  probabilities  multiplied  by 10,000. These estimates approximate the
     significance from a search of a 10,000 entry database.   They  differ  from
     the  -E 0.05 initial theshold by the same factor of 10,000.  This is an un-
     fortunate inconsistency, but I believe that it is helpful	to  provide  the
     perspective of a database search.

     The lalign/plalign/fasta programs use a standard text format sequence file.
     Lines  beginning  with  '>' or ';' are considered comments and ignored; se-
     quences can be upper or lower case, blanks,tabs and unrecognizable  charac-
     ters are ignored.	lalign/plalign expect sequences to use the single letter
     amino acid codes, see protcodes(1) .

OPTIONS
     lalign and the other programs can be directed to change the scoring matrix,
     search  parameters, output format, and default search directories by enter-
     ing options on the command line (preceeded by a `-'). All	of  the  options
     should  preceed  the  file name and ktup arguments). Alternately, these op-
     tions can be changed by setting environment variables.  The options and en-
     vironment variables are:

     -E #   Pairwise-probability limit (default -E 0.05).

     -K #   maximum number of alignments to be shown (default -K 50).

     -f #   Penalty for the first residue a gap (-14 by default).

     -g #   Penalty for each additional residue in a gap (-4 by default).

     -i     Compare the reverse complement (DNA only).

     -I     Show alignment between identical sequences.  Normally, the	identity
	    alignment is not shown.

     -m #   (MARKX)  =1,2,3.  Alternate  display  of  matches  and mismatches in
	    alignments. MARKX=1 uses ":","."," ",  for	identities,  consevative
	    replacements,   and   non-conservative  replacements,  respectively.
	    MARKX=2 uses " ","x", and "X".  MARKX=3 does not show the second se-
	    quence, but uses the second alignment line to display matches with a
	    "."  for identity, or with the mismatched  residue	for  mismatches.
	    MARKX=3 is useful for aligning large numbers of similar sequences.

     -n     pre-specify DNA sequence, rather than infer from  sequence.

     -N #   limit first and second sequences to '#' residues.

     -s str
	    (SMATRIX)  the  filename of an alternative scoring matrix file.  For
	    protein sequences, BLOSUM50 is used by default; PAM250 can	be  used
	    with the command line option -s P250, BLOSUM62 with "-s BL62".

     -v str
	    (LINEVAL)  (plalign  only)	plalign  can  use up to 4 different line
	    styles to denote the scores of local alignments.   The  scores  that
	    correspond	to  these line styles can be specified with the environ-
	    ment variable LINVAL, or with the -v  option.   In	either	case,  a
	    string with three numbers separated by spaces should be given.  This
	    string  must  be surrounded by double quotation marks.  For example,
	    LINEVAL="200 100 50" tells plalign to  use	solid  lines  for  local
	    alignments	with  scores  greater  than  200,  long dashed lines for
	    scores between 100 and 200, short dashed lines for scores between 50
	    and 100, and dotted lines for scores less than 50.
		 plalign -v "200 100 50"
	    Normally, the values are 200, 100, and 50 for protein sequence  com-
	    parisons and 400, 200, and 100 for DNA sequence comparisons.

     -w #   (LINLEN)  output line length for sequence alignments.  (normally 60,
	    can be set up to 200).

EXAMPLES
     (1)    lalign mchu.aa mchu.aa

     Compare the amino acid sequence in the file mchu.aa with itself and  report
     the ten best local alignments.  Sequence files should have the form:

	  >MCHU - Calmodulin - Human ...
	  ADQLTEEQIAEF ...

     (2)    plalign -K 100 -E 0.01 qrhuld.aa egmsmg.aa

     Display  up  to  100  local alignments of the LDL receptor (qrhuld.aa) with
     epidermal growth factor precursor (egmsmg.aa) with  pairwise  probabilities
     better than 0.01.	Plot the results on the screen.

     (3)    lalign

     Run  the  lalign  program in interactive mode.  The program will prompt for
     the name of two sequence files and the number of alignments to show.

SEE ALSO
     ssearch(1), prss(1), fasta(1), protcodes(5), dnacodes(5)

AUTHOR
     Bill Pearson
     wrp@virginia.EDU

				      local		       LALIGN/PLALIGN(1)

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