Multiple sequence alignment withhierarchical clustering

An algorithm ispresented forthemultiple alignment ofsequences, either proteins ornucleic acids, thatisbothaccurateandeasytouseon microcompu- ters.Theapproachisbasedon theconventional dynamic-programming methodof pairwise alignment. Initially, a hierarchical clustering ofthesequencesisper- formedusingthematrixofthepairwise alignment scores.Theclosest sequences arealigned creating groupsofaligned sequences. Thenclosegroupsarealigned untilallsequencesarealigned inonegroup.Thepairwise alignments included in themultiple alignment forma new matrixthatisusedtoproducea hierarchical clustering. Ifitisdifferent fromthefirstone,iteration oftheprocesscan be performed. Themethodisillustrated by an example:a global alignment of39 sequencesofcytochrome c.