CLUSTAL W Multiple Sequence Alignment Program (version 1.6, March 1996) Clustal W is a major re-write of the multiple alignment program Clustal V (Ref: Higgins, Bleasby, and Fuchs (1991) CABIOS, 8, 189-191). The major modifications are described in the paper: Thompson, J.D., Higgins, D.G. and Gibson, T.J. (1994) CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, positions-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Research, 22:4673-4680. (an ASCII version (clustalw.ms) can be found in this directory). The code has been tested on UNIX (SGI, SUN, DEC), VMS, Macintosh and PC's. To compile the program on UNIX, type: make (for SUN user's, make -f makefile.sun). To compile the program on VMS, type: @vmslink To run the program, type clustalw. The user is presented with a system of menus which allow all functions to be selected and all alignment parameters may be modified, if desired. Documentation for Clustal V and a 'what's new' file (Clustalw.doc) are included in the directory. Online help is also available for most options of the program. For a full list of command line options, type 'clustalw /options'. If you have any questions or comments, please contact one of: Des Higgins E-mail: Higgins@EBI.ac.uk Toby Gibson E-mail: Gibson@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE