MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput

Nucleic Acids Res. 2004 Mar 19;32(5):1792-7. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkh340. Print 2004.

Abstract

We describe MUSCLE, a new computer program for creating multiple alignments of protein sequences. Elements of the algorithm include fast distance estimation using kmer counting, progressive alignment using a new profile function we call the log-expectation score, and refinement using tree-dependent restricted partitioning. The speed and accuracy of MUSCLE are compared with T-Coffee, MAFFT and CLUSTALW on four test sets of reference alignments: BAliBASE, SABmark, SMART and a new benchmark, PREFAB. MUSCLE achieves the highest, or joint highest, rank in accuracy on each of these sets. Without refinement, MUSCLE achieves average accuracy statistically indistinguishable from T-Coffee and MAFFT, and is the fastest of the tested methods for large numbers of sequences, aligning 5000 sequences of average length 350 in 7 min on a current desktop computer. The MUSCLE program, source code and PREFAB test data are freely available at http://www.drive5. com/muscle.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Amino Acid Motifs
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Internet
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sequence Alignment / methods*
  • Sequence Analysis, Protein / methods*
  • Software*
  • Time Factors