AAindex is a database of amino acid indices and amino acid mutation matrices. An amino acid index is a set of 20 numerical values representing various physico--chemical and biochemical properties of amino acids. An amino acid mutation matrix is generally 20 x 20 numerical values representing similarity of amino acids. AAindex consists of two sections: AAindex1 for the collection of published amino acid indices and AAindex2 for the collection of published amino acid mutation matrices. Each entry of either AAindex1 or AAindex2 consists of the definition, the reference information, a list of related entries in terms of the correlation coefficient and the actual data. The database may be accessed through the DBGET/LinkDB system at GenomeNet (http://www. genome.ad.jp/aaindex/ ) or may be downloaded by anonymous FTP (ftp://ftp.genome.ad.jp/db/genomenet/aaindex/ ).