Steps toward computer analysis of nucleotide sequences.

Advances in recombinant DNA technology have allowed the isolation of large numbers of biologically interesting fragments of DNA. Concomitant improvements in methods for nucleic acid sequencing have led many investigators to characterize their clones by sequencing them. This has resulted in the accumulation of such large amounts of sequence data that computer-assisted methods, with programs directed toward the manipulation of nucleic acid sequences, have become indispensable during the collection and analysis of that data.