leading researchers concisely summarize their hands-on experiences and methods for successfully using the most popular sequence analysis software packages available. these experts demonstrate how to examine the data produced by modern automated sequencers, how to assess its quality, how to remove extraneous data, how to align multiple overlapping sequence fragments for either assembly into sequence contigs or comparison with similar sequences from different sources. procedures for comparing newly derived sequences with the massive amounts of information in the sequence databases are fully covered, as are techniques for performing restriction analysis, searching for open reading frames, calculating the translation products of open reading frames, and making detailed analyses of the expressed proteins.