What are the Intelligenetics, Mase, FastA, and other sequence formats?
Many sequence analysis tools use multiple sequence alignments as the input data for analysis. There are many different ways to format the alignment information. For example, Fasta and Intelligenetics formats list sequences sequentially and have a sequence name on a line by itself, followed by many lines of sequence. Intelligenetics format allows comment lines preceded by semicolons; FastA format does not. It is relatively simple to convert from one format to another, and most program packages provide scripts or programs to aid in file format conversion. FastA format is considered a standard format, and most sequence analysis programs can import or convert FastA files. Our tools programs will take many common sequence formats. If your sequences are in a format the programs cannot handle, you can find web-based sequence conversion tools, on our site and elsewhere.
