Sequence analysis

The sequence of a linear polymer such as a protein, DNA or RNA is the sequence formed by its monomers. It is also referred to as the primary structure of a given molecule.

The sequence of standard proteins, DNA, or RNA can be expressed as a string over a finite alphabet that represents well-studied monomers. It allows the development of many powerful algorithms and statistics.

Although sequence analysis constitutes an important panel of bioinformatics, sequences are only one of the many forms of experimental data that are available to the bioinformatician.