Bioinformatics:Multiple sequence alignment different formats:

Bioinformatics:Multiple sequence alignment different formats:

People sometimes find it confusing when it comes to different multiple sequence alignment formats (what to use with what???), that's because the variety of programs that handles multiple sequence alignments, sometimes you find a program that uses FASTA format and sometimes MSF (Multiple Sequence Format)...etc.

The reason why there are a lot of formats out there, is that every format had appeared by specialists in a specific field, for example specialists in phylogeny use Phylip format...etc

So before you use any format you have to ask yourself questions like: is this format supported by the program i'm running, is it easy for me to modify in it, is it widely accepted...etc.

Some of the most popular multiple sequence alignment formats:

1- FASTA: a text format that's widely accepted and its easy to read and modify.
2- MSF: (Multiple Sequence Format), the most popular, supported by most programs, easy to read and difficult to modify.
3- ALN: produced by ClustalW, easy to read and widely supported.
4- Phylip: text format, supported by most phylogenetic packages.

Any question, u're welcome.