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ALIGN(1)		     General Commands Manual			ALIGN(1)

NAME
     align - compute the global alignment of two protein or DNA sequences

     align0 - compute the global alignment of two protein or DNA sequences with-
     out penalizing for end-gaps

SYNOPSIS
     align  [  -f # -g # -O filename  -m # -s SMATRIX -w # ] sequence-file-1 se-
     quence-file-2

DESCRIPTION
     align produces an optimal global alignment between two protein or	DNA  se-
     quences.  align will automatically decide whether the query sequence is DNA
     or protein by reading the query sequence as protein and determining whether
     the  `amino-acid composition' is more than 85% A+C+G+T.  align uses a modi-
     fication of the algorithm described by E. Myers and W. Miller in	"Optimal
     Alignments  in Linear Space" CABIOS (1988) 4:11-17.  The program can be in-
     voked either with command line arguments or in interactive mode.

     align weights end gaps, so that an alignment of the form
	  -----MACF
	  SRTKIMACF
     will have a higher score than:
	  MACF
	  MACF
     align0 uses the same algorithm, but does not weight  end  gaps.   Sometimes
     this can have surprising effects.

     align and align0 use the standard fasta format sequence file.  Lines begin-
     ning  with '>' or ';' are considered comments and ignored; sequences can be
     upper or lower case, blanks,tabs and unrecognizable characters are ignored.
     align expects sequences to use the single	letter	amino  acid  codes,  see
     protcodes(1) .

OPTIONS
     align can be directed to change the scoring matrix and output format by en-
     tering  options on the command line (preceeded by a `-' or `/' for MS-DOS).
     All of the options should preceed the  file  name	arguments.  Alternately,
     these options can be changed by setting environment variables.  The options
     and environment variables are:

     -f #   Penalty for the first residue in a gap (-12 by default).

     -g #   Penalty for additional residues in a gap (-2 by default).

     -O filename
	    Sends copy of results to "filename".

     -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.

     -s str
	    (SMATRIX)  the  filename  of  an  alternative scoring matrix file or
	    "250" to use the PAM250 matrix.

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

EXAMPLES
     (1)    align musplfm.aa lcbo.aa

     Compare  the amino acid sequence in the file musplfm.aa with the amino acid
     sequence in the file lcbo.aa Each sequence should be in the form:
	  >LCBO bovine preprolactin
	  WILLLSQ ...

     (2)    align -w 80 musplfm.aa lcbo.aa > musplfm.aln

     Compare the amino acid sequence in the file musplfm.aa with  the  sequences
     in  the  file  lcbo.aa  Show both sequences with 80 residues on each output
     line and write the output to the file musplfm.aln.

     (3)    align

     Run the align program in interactive mode.  The program will prompt for the
     file name for the first sequence and the second sequence.

SEE ALSO
     rdf2(1),protcodes(5), dnacodes(5)

AUTHOR
     Bill Pearson
     wrp@virginia.EDU

				      local				ALIGN(1)

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