SnapGene has tools for:
- Aligning sequences to a reference sequence
- Pairwise/multiple alignment of related sequences
- De novo assembly of Sanger reads
Alignment of sequences to a reference
The "Align Sanger Reads to a Reference" tool is an alignment tool. It is not an Map to reference assembly tool. All sequences/reads are aligned independently to the reference sequence.
You can use the Align Sanger Reads to a Reference Sequence tool you can check and validate your cloning or mutagenesis experiments by aligning Sanger reads to a reference sequence.
You can also use this tool to "map" mRNA or cDNA sequences to a genomic sequence - see Create a Feature with Introns Using an Aligned cDNA.
See the Guide article Align Sanger Reads to a Reference Sequence to learn more about aligning sequences to a reference.
Assemble Contigs
The "Assemble Contigs" tool is a de novo Sanger sequence assembler, based on the CAP3 algorithm.
This tool should only be used to assemble reads derived from the same source genome/clone/sequence.
This tool can be used to assemble Sanger reads to generate one or more contigs and consensus sequences.
See the Guide article De Novo Assembly of Sanger Sequences to learn more about assembling Sanger reads.
Multiple Alignment of Related Sequences
SnapGene provides four third-party alignment tools that you can use to align three or more DNA and/or RNA sequences, or three or more protein sequences:
- Clustal Omega
- MAFFT
- MUSCLE
- T-Coffee
These multiple alignment tool can be used to align and compare related sequences.
See the Guide chapter Pairwise and Multiple Alignment to learn more about performing multiple alignments in SnapGene.