Abstract

We present an online server that generates a 3D representation of properties of user-submitted RNA or DNA alignments. The visualized properties are information of single alignment columns, mutual information of two alignment positions as well as the position-specific fraction of gaps. The nucleotide composition of both single columns and column pairs is visualized with the help of color-coded 3D bars labeled with letters. The server generates both VRML and JVX output that can be viewed with a VRML viewer or the JavaView applet, respectively. We show that combining these different features of an alignment into one 3D representation is helpful in identifying correlations between bases and potential RNA and DNA base pairs. Significant known correlations between the tRNA 3' anticodon cardinal nucleotide and the extended anticodon were observed, as were correlations within the amino acid acceptor stem and between the cardinal nucleotide and the acceptor stem. The online server can be accessed using the URL http://correlogo.abcc.ncifcrf.gov.