Work with multiple documents containing biological sequence alignment parameters and customize them to perform analysis, modeling of modification operations in a virtual environment connected to third-party applications and featuring a quick preview mode.
BioEdit is a software program that embeds the tools that scientists and technicians need so they perform specific tasks, such as manipulation of sequence alignment, ABI tracing or RNA analysis.
The program's GUI is severely outdated, mostly because it was designed to operate in older OS, like Windows95/98/NT. When it's installed on a contemporary OS, the main menu text appears blurry. Also, the information inside menu tabs looks dispersed and overcrowded at the same time, while the response to user actions is sometimes low, not to mention that the program often freezes.
Despite it doesn't impress with its appearance, BioEdit provides users numerous functionalities for completing their tasks.
It can display and print ABI chromatograms, sort sequences by name, annotate sequences with multiple graphical features or merge alignments through a reference sequence.
Furthermore, users can customize menu shortcuts for editor window, import compatible formats directly from the clipboard, or view and manipulate up to 20000 sequences.
To summarize, despite not being continued by the developer, and having an outdated look, BioEdit remains an important free alternative to more expensive utilities.
v7.2 [May 4, 2013]
- The dot-plot feature for pairwise sequence comparison was brought back by request from a user (Under Sequence->Pairwise alignment->Dot Plot (pairwise comparison).
- Taxonomy mapping from sequence title was brought back under Sequence->Phylogeny / Taxonomy->Extract Taxonomy->(three mapping options). Only bacterial and viral taxonomies are supported by default, but a custom table can be made by opening the file ‹BioEdit›\tables\ Bacterial_phylogeny.tab or ‹BioEdit›\tables\ Viral_Phylogeny.tab, copying the contents into MS Excel, and creating a custom table according to the same general template, then saving the custom file as a tab-delimited file. If time permits, an auto-map of taxonomy from NCBI may be added in the future for convenience.
