• • • • Get with the Program It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention. In the world of bioinformatics, the need to examine and manipulate large volumes of sequence data begat specialized computer software to handle these tasks.
These programs vary in terms of ease-of-use, power, and functionality. Yet they can each perform some or all of the following functions: DNA and protein sequence entry, editing, annotation, analysis, and alignment; primer identification; map making; contig assembly; 'in silico' cl. It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention.