jPHYDIT: a JAVA-based integrated environment for molecular phylogeny of ribosomal RNA sequences

Abstract

jPHYDIT is a Java application designed to furnish a visual and integrated environment for molecular phylogeny. The program can be used to visualize intra-strand base-pairing information in secondary and tertiary structures of ribosomal RNA ( rRNA) sequences. A function for the semi-automated alignment was included to facilitate handling of the database containing a large number of multiple-aligned rRNA sequences. Integration of nucleotide sequence editing, pair-wise alignment, multiple alignment and phylogenetic treeing functions provide an easy and efficient way of analyzing rRNA sequences for molecular evolution, systematics, epidemiology and ecology.