Gene. 101 (1991) 251-254 0 1991 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. 0378-l 119/91/$03.50 GENE 03977 251 VOSTORG *: a package of microcomputer programs for sequence analysis and construction of phylo- genetic trees (Nucleotide sequence; amino acid sequence; sequence alignment; IBM PC/XT/AT/PS-2 computers; data presentation) Andrey A. Zharkikh, Andrey Yu. Rzhetsky, Pave1 S. Morosov, Tatiana L. Sitnikova and Julia S. Krushkal Institute zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA of Cytology and Genetics, Siberian Branch of USSR Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, 630090 (U.S.S.R) Received by S.T. Case: 17 March 1990 Revised: 14 June 1990 Accepted: 21 November 1990 SUMMARY VOSTORG is a new, versatile package of programs for the inference and presentation of phylogenetic trees, as well as an efficient tool for nucleotide (nt) and amino acid (aa) sequence analysis (sequence input, verification, alignment, construc- tion of consensus, etc.). On appropriately equipped systems, these data can be displayed on a video monitor or printed as required. They are implemented on IBM PC/XT/AT/PS-2 or compatible computers and hardware graphic support is recommended. The package is designed to be easily handled by occasional computer users and yet it is powerful enough for experienced professionals. INTRODUCTION EXPERIMENTAL AND DISCUSSION Molecular geneticists, gene engineers and others who deal with gene or protein sequencing often encounter problems connected with obtaining some biologically signi- ficant information from the sequences they have de- ciphered. The VOSTORG package was designed to pro- vide a wide range of experimental researchers with an easy- to-use and a user-friendly tool which enables them to per- form a complete set of procedures starting with a sequence input into the computer and ending with a print-out of the final results. (a) Hardware and software The VOSTORG (version 2.5) package has been imple- mented on IBM PC/XT/AT/PS-2 microcomputers and other compatibles with a minimum of 384 kilobytes of mem- ory, a floppy-disk drive and a graphics printer. A hard-disk drive is recommended for very large data sets. Some of the routines require graphics display. The VOSTORG package was written using Turbo C, version 2.0 (Turbo C is the registered trademark of Borland International, Inc., Scotts Valley, CA). zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONML Correspondence to: Dr. A.A. Zharkikh, Institute ofCytology and Genetics, Novosibirsk, 630090 (U.S.S.R.) Tel. 7(3832)356406; Fax 7(3832)356558. * For a description of specific programs within this package (such as SEQU, ALSEQ, DOTMAP, MULTAL, SEQED, MATDIS, MATTRE, UPGMA, WPGMA, UPGMC, WPGMC, OPTTRE, and TREPRT) see sections c-k. (b) General description of the package Abbreviations: aa, amino acid(s); bp, base pair(s); kb, kilobase or 1000 bp; nt, nucleotide(s) All software components of the VOSTORG package are run by a management program under the same name. They are menu-driven and supplied with some detailed context- dependent help windows. If necessary, a user could reinstall any color text attributes in any program and save them into an appropriate attribute file. All the programs are supplied with a detailed description and a user’s manual.