So, what is EMBOSS?

EMBOSS is a new, free Open Source software analysis package specially developed for the needs of the molecular biology (e.g. EMBnet) user community. The software automatically copes with data in a variety of formats and even allows transparent retrieval of sequence data from the web. Also, as extensive libraries are provided with the package, it is a platform to allow other scientists to develop and release software in true open source spirit. EMBOSS also integrates a range of currently available packages and tools for sequence analysis into a seamless whole. EMBOSS breaks the historical trend towards commercial software packages.

The EMBOSS suite:

• Provides a comprehensive set of sequence analysis programs (approximately 100)
• Provides a set of core software libraries (AJAX and NUCLEUS)
• Integrates other publicly available packages
• Encourages the use of EMBOSS in sequence analysis training.
• Encourages developers elsewhere to use the EMBOSS libraries.
• Supports all common Unix platforms including Linux, Digital Unix, Irix and Solaris.

Within EMBOSS you will find over 100 programs (applications). These are just some of the areas covered:

• Sequence alignment
• Rapid database searching with sequence patterns
• Protein motif identification, including domain analysis
• EST analysis
• Nucleotide sequence pattern analysis, for example to identify CpG islands.
• Simple and species-specific repeat identification
• Codon usage analysis for small genomes
• Rapid identification of sequence patterns in large scale sequence sets.
• Presentation tools for publication
• And much more.

More information about EMBOSS can be found at