staden-lg/help/STADEN.RNO

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Introduction to the Staden sequence analysis package and its user interface
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The package contains the following programs:
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GIP Gel input program
SAP Sequence assemble program
NIP Nucleotide interpretation program
PIP Protein interpretation program
SIP Similarity investigation program
MEP Motif exploration program
NIPL Nucleotide interpretation program (library)
PIPL Protein interpretation program (library)
SIPL Similarity investigation program (library)
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GIP uses a digitiser for entry of DNA sequences from
autoradiographs.
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SAP handles everything relating to assembling gel
readings in order to produce a consensus sequence. It can also deal with
families of protein sequences.
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NIP provides functions for analysing and interpretting
individual nucleotide sequences.
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PIP provides functions for analysing and interpretting
individual protein sequences.
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MEP analyses families of nucleotide sequences to help discover new motifs.
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NIPL performs pattern searches on nucleotide sequence libraries.
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PIPL performs pattern searches on protein sequence libraries.
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SIP provides functions for comparing and aligning
pairs of protein or nucleotide sequences.
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SIPL searches nucleotide and protein sequence
libraries for entries similar to probe sequences.
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Documentation
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As is explained below, the
programs SAP, NIP, PIP, SIP and MEP have online help,
and the help files have the names: HELPSAP, HELPNIP, HELPPIP, HELPSIP,
HELPMEP. These
files can be displayed on the screen or printed using the appropriate
commands. Currently the help for the other programs is also contained in
these files. For example help for NIPL is in HELPNIP. This file is called
HELPSTADEN.
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Sequence formats
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The shotgun sequencing program SAP deals only with simple
text files for gel readings, and is a self-contained system.
However as there is still no single agreed format
for finished sequences or for libraries of sequences,
the other programs in the package can read data that is stored in several ways.
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The analytical programs can read individual sequences stored in the following
formats:
Staden, EMBL, Genbank, PIR (also known as NBRF), and GCG, but for storing whole
libraries we use only PIR format. In addition
these programs can perform a number of
simple operations using libraries stored in this format. They can extract
entries by entry name, can search titles for keywords, can search the whole
of the annotation files for keywords, and can extract annotations for any
named entry.
We reformat all sequence libraries into PIR format. Currently we
have NBRF, EMBL, SWISSPROT and VECBASE libraries in PIR format.
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The library searching programs operate only
on sequences stored in PIR format.
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The analytical programs
will operate with uppercase or lowercase sequence
characters. In addition T and U are equivalent. SAP uses uppercase letters
for original gel readings and lowercase letters for characters that are
corrected by the automatic editor.
Programs NIP and PIP use IUB symbols for redundancy in back translations
and for sequence searches.
The symbols are shown below.
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NC-IUB SYMBOLS
A,C,G,T
R (A,G) 'puRine'
Y (T,C) 'pYrimidine'
W (A,T) 'Weak'
S (C,G) 'Strong'
M (A,C) 'aMino'
K (G,T) 'Keto'
H (A,T,C) 'not G'
B (G,C,T) 'not A'
V (G,A,C) 'not T'
D (G,A,T) 'not C'
N (G,A,C,T) 'aNy'
.end lit
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The user interface
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The user interface is common to all programs.
It consists of a set of menus and a uniform way
of presenting choices and obtaining input
from the user. This section describes: the
menu system; how options are selected and other choices made; how values
are supplied to the program; how help is obtained, and
how to escape from any part of a program. In addition it gives information
about saving results in files and the use of graphics for presenting
results.
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Menus
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Each program has several menus and numerous options.
Each menu or option has a unique number that is used to
identify it. Menu numbers are distinguished from
option numbers by being preceded by the letter
m (or M, all programs make no distinction between
upper and lower case letters). With the exception of
some parts of program SAP, the menus are not hierachical,
rather the options they each contain are simply lists of
related functions and their identifying numbers.
Therefore options can be selected independently
of the menu that is currently being shown on the
screen, and the menus are simply memory aides.
All options and menus are selected by typing their
option number when the programs present the prompt
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"? Menu or option number =".
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To select a menu type its number preceded by
the letter M. To select an option type its number.
If you type only "return" you will get menu m0
which is simply a list of menus. If you select an
option you will return to the current menu after the function is completed.
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When you select an option, in many cases the
program will immediately perform the operation
selected without further dialogue. If you precede an option
number by the letter d (e.g. D17), you
will force the program to offer dialogue about the selected option
before the function operates,
hence allowing you to change the value of any of its parameters. If
you precede an option number by the symbol ? (e.g. ?17),
you will be given help on the option (here 17).
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Where possible, equivalent or identical options have been given the same
numbers in all programs, and so users quickly learn the numbers for
the functions they employ most often.
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Help
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As mentioned above, help about each option can be obtained by
preceding the option number by the symbol ? when you are presented
with the prompt "? Menu or option number", but there are two further
ways of obtaining help. Whenever the program asks a question
you can respond by typing the symbol ? and you will receive information
about the current option. In addition, option number 1
in all the programs will give help on all of a programs functions.
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Quitting
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To exit from any point in a program you type ! for quit.
If a menu is on the screen this will stop the program, otherwise
you will be returned to the last menu.
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Other interactions
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Questions are presented in a few restricted ways.
In all cases typing only "return" in response to a question means
yes, and typing N or n means no.
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Obvious opposites such as "clear screen" and "keep picture"
are presented with only the default shown. For example
in this case the default is generally "keep picture" so the
program will display:
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"(y/n) (y) Keep picture"
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and the picture will be retained if the user types anything other than N or
n, (in which case the screen will be cleared).
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Where there are choices that are not obvious opposites, or
there are more than two choices, two further conventions are used:
"radio buttons" and "check boxes".
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Radio buttons are used when only one of a number of choices can be
made at any one time. The choices are presented arranged one above the
other, each choice with a number for its selection, and the default
choice marked with an X. For example in the restriction
enzyme search routine the following choices are offered:
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Select output mode
1 order results enzyme by enzyme
2 order results by positon
X 3 show only infrequent cutters
4 show names above the sequence
? Selection (1-4) (3) =
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Any single option can be selected by typing the option number,
and the default option, (here shown as 3), is also obtained by
typing only "return". Again help can be obtained by typing ? and
you can quit by typing !.
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Check boxes are used when any number of a set of choices can be
made (i.e. the choices are not exclusive). Choices are
made by typing choice numbers. Each choice can be considered
as a switch whose setting is reversed when it is selected. Choices that are
currently switched on are marked with an X.
The user quits from making selections by typing only
"return". For example in the routine that plots base composition
you can plot the frequencies of any combination of bases, e.g. only
A, or A+T, or A+T+G etc.
The following check box is offered to the user:
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X 1 T
2 C
X 3 A
4 G
? Selection (1-4) () =
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As shown this will plot the A+T composition. To switch off T
you select 1, to switch on C you select 2, etc, to quit,
having set the bases required you type only "return".
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Input of numerical values
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All input of integer or decimal numbers is presented in a
standard way with the allowed range shown in brackets and the default
value also in brackets. For example:
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? span (5-31) (11) =
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In this example you could type any number between 5 and 31,
or "return" only, or ! or ? (see above). Any other input will cause the
program to ask the question again. Typing only "return" gives the default
value (here 11).
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Use of the bell
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The programs use the bell to indicate that a task is completed.
This allows users to read textual results before they are scrolled up off
the screen, or to look at a plot before it is scrolled over by the menus.
When the bell sounds, the programs will wait
until return is typed. You can quit from these points by typing ! but
no help is available.
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Printing and saving results in files
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A few of the functions in the programs automatically write their textual
results
to disk files, but for most functions you can choose whether results
appear on the terminal screen or go to a file. This applies to both text
and graphical results.
For these functions
the normal, or default, place for results to
appear is on the screen, and users need to decide before the
function is selected if they want to redirect the results to a file.
In all programs, option number 7, "Direct output to disk" gives control
over whether results appear on the screen or go to a file. When a program
is started results will be sent to the screen. If option 7 is selected
users will be given the choice of redirecting either text or graphics to a
file. The program will then ask users to supply a file name. From that
point on all results will be sent to the file until option 7 is selected again,
in which case the "redirection file" will be closed, and results will start
to appear on the screen.
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If these files contain textual results they can be looked at
from within the programs
by using option 6, "List a text file". Once you leave the program
you can use an appropriate system command to print the files.
There is no function within the programs to direct files to a printer.
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The converse of the above is also possible. That
is, it is possible to redirect results that would normally go to file,
so that they appear instead on the screen. This is often useful as a way
of checking results before saving them in a file. On a VAX using
VMS you do this by typing TT: for the name of the file that the
program would create. TT: is what VMS calls the screen.
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Use of graphics
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The analytical programs including NIP, PIP and SIP present the results of
many of their analyses graphically. The position at which the results for
any function appear on the screen is defined relative to a notional users
"drawing board" of dimension 10,000 by 10,000. This drawing board fills the
screen and results are drawn in windows defined using symbols x0,yo and
xlength,ylength,
where x0,y0 is the position of the bottom left hand corner of the window,
and xlength is the width of the window and ylength the
height of the window.
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--------------------------------------------------------- 10,000
1 1
1 -------------------------------------- ^ 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 ylength 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
1 -------------------------------------- v 1
1 x0,y0^ 1
1 <---------------xlength--------------> 1
--------------------------------------------------------- 1
1 10,000
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The window positions for each option are read from a file
when a program is started. If required individual users could have their
own set of plot positions, and also the positions
can be redefined from within the
programs using option number 14.
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For those analyses that draw continuous lines to represent results
(for example a plot of base composition) the user is asked to supply the
"Plot interval". All the analyses produce a value for every point along the
sequence but often it is unnecessary to actually plot the
values for all the points.
The plot interval is simply the distance between the points
shown on the screen. If the user selects a plot interval of 1, every point
will be plotted; a plot interval of 3 will show every third point. It is a
way of speeding up the analyses.
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Saving graphics
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Many terminals are not capable of dumping their screen contents to a
file for subsequent printing. One convenient way of obtaining hard copy
of graphical results is to use a micro computer as a terminal. On
the Macintosh we use the terminal emulator versa
termPro. This allows graphics to be saved as
Macintosh files that can be annotated and printed using
Macdraw and other painting programs.
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Alternatively graphics can be redirected to a file and printed using a
laser printer with tektronix capability (see
"Printing and saving results in files").