The database on small ribosomal subunit RNA structure contained 1804 nucleotide sequences on April 23, 1993. This number comprises 365 eukaryotlc, 65 archaeal, 1260 bacterial, 30 plastldial, and 84 mttochondrial sequences. These are stored in the form of an alignment in order to facilitate the use of the database as input for comparative studies on higherorder structure and for reconstruction of phylogenetic trees. The elements of the postulated secondary structure for each molecule are Indicated by special symbols. The database is available on-line directly from the authors by ftp and can also be obtained from the EMBL nucleotide sequence library by electronic mall, ftp, and on CD ROM disk.

Summary: RnaViz has been developed to easily create nice, publication quality drawings of RNA secondary structure. RnaViz 2 supports CT, DCSE, and RNAML input formats and improves on many aspects of the first version, notably portability and structure annotation. RnaViz is written using a hybrid programming approach combining pieces written in C and in the scripting language Tcl/Tk, making the program very portable and extensible. Availability: Source code, binaries for Linux and MS Windows, and additional documentation are available athttp://rrna.uia.ac.be/rnaviz/ Contact: derijkp@uia.ua.ac.be * To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Technological improvements shifted sequencing from low-throughput, work-intensive, gel-based systems to high-throughput capillary systems. This resulted in a broad use of genomic resequencing to identify sequence variations in genes and regulatory, as well as extended genomic regions. We describe a software package, novoSNP, that conscientiously discovers single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertion-deletion polymorphisms (INDELs) in sequence trace files in a fast, reliable, and user-friendly way. We compared the performance of novoSNP with that of PolyPhred and PolyBayes on two data sets. The first data set comprised 1028 sequence trace files obtained from diagnostic mutation analyses of SCN1A (neuronal voltage-gated sodium channel α-subunit type I gene). The second data set comprised 9062 sequence trace files from a genomic resequencing project aiming at the construction of a high-density SNP map of MAPT (microtubule-associated protein tau gene). Visual inspection of these data sets had identified 38 sequence variations for SCN1A and 488 for MAPT. novoSNP automatically identified all 38 SCN1A variations including five INDELs, while for MAPT only 15 of the 488 variations were not correctly marked. PolyPhred detected far fewer SNPs as compared to novoSNP and missed nearly all INDELs. PolyBayes, designed for the sequence analysis of cloned templates, detected only a limited number of the variations present in the data set. Besides the significant improvement in the automated detection of sequence variations both in diagnostic mutation analyses and in SNP discovery projects, novoSNP also offers a user-friendly interface for inspecting possible genetic variations.

Distinguishing single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) from errors in whole-genome sequences remains challenging. Here we describe a set of filters, together with a freely accessible software tool, that selectively reduce error rates and thereby facilitate variant detection in data from two short-read sequencing technologies, Complete Genomics and Illumina. By sequencing the nearly identical genomes from monozygotic twins and considering shared SNVs as 'true variants' and discordant SNVs as 'errors', we optimized thresholds for 12 individual filters and assessed which of the 1,048 filter combinations were effective in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Cumulative application of all effective filters reduced the error rate by 290-fold, facilitating the identification of genetic differences between monozygotic twins. We also applied an adapted, less stringent set of filters to reliably identify somatic mutations in a highly rearranged tumor and to identify variants in the NA19240 HapMap genome relative to a reference set of SNVs.

The European database of the Small Subunit (SSU) Ribosomal RNA is a curated database that strives to collect all information about the primary and secondary structure of completely or nearly-completely sequenced rRNAs. Furthermore, the database compiles additional information such as literature references and taxonomic status of the organism the sequence was derived from. The database can be consulted via the WWW at URL http://rrna.uia.ac.be/ssu/. Through the WWW, sequences can be easily selected either one by one, by taxonomic group, or by a combination of both, and can be retrieved in different sequence and alignment formats.

RnaViz is a user-friendly, portable, windows-type program for producing publication-quality secondary structure drawings of RNA molecules. Drawings can be created starting from DCSE alignment files if they incorporate structure information or from mfold ct files. The layout of a structure can be changed easily. Display of special structural elements such as pseudo-knots or unformatted areas is possible. Sequences can be automatically numbered, and several other types of labels can be used to annotate particular bases or areas. Although the program does not try to produce an initially non-overlapping drawing, the layout of a properly positioned structure drawing can be applied to a newly created drawing using skeleton files. In this way a range of similar structures can be drawn with a minimum of effort. Skeletons for several types of RNA molecule are included with the program.