Sunday, May 15, 2011

Curves+ web server

Through Google Scholar, I become aware of the article online in Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), titled "CURVES+ web server for analyzing and visualizing the helical, backbone and groove parameters of nucleic acid structures" by Richard Lavery's group:
Curves+, a revised version of the Curves software for analyzing the conformation of nucleic acid structures, is now available as a web server. This version, which can be freely accessed at http://gbio-pbil.ibcp.fr/cgi/Curves_plus/, allows the user to upload a nucleic acid structure file, choose the nucleotides to be analyzed and after optionally setting a number of input variables, view the numerical and graphic results online or download files containing a set of helical, backbone and groove parameters that fully describe the structure. PDB format files are also provided for offline visualization of the helical axis and groove geometry.
The website looks quite streamlined, with required input information all in a single page, and the test page also ran smoothly. In less than two years following the publication of Curves+, it is nice to see the Curves+ web server version available, making this analysis tool more readily available to the nucleic acids community.

Nowadays, it seems safe (to the best of my knowledge) to say that only 3DNA and Curves+ conform to the 1999 Tsukuba convention for the description of nucleic acid base-pair geometry, and each of them provides a web interface: web 3DNA and web Curves+.

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