DNA(ID:6682/dna001)Language for DNA research Related languages
References: Extract: DNA* To accomplish this, we began to develop a DNA oriented editing program in which these concepts appeared more naturally. In writing this program we realized that DNA manipulations lent themselves to formal mathematical description and we devised a very compact notation to express them. For this paper we have carefully reevaluated the notation, extended it, and prepared a formal description using the Backus- Naur-Form (BNF), a meta-language designed for syntactic descriptions of languages that was originally devised to define ALGOL 60 (4,5,6). The language we describe, which we call DNA*, differs in some ways from what was used in the file splicing program that inspired it. A most important difference is that DNA* employs context free constructions exclusively and has been designed so that a simple parsing program can be used to decode its sentences as they are read, without backtracking. We have also eliminated certain non-uniformities from the original notation. The language can be readily extended through the addition of functions that operate on sequences. In the following sections we present a description of the language from the point of view of a molecular biologist user, followed by a formal description of the syntax that may be used by the computer programmer to implement or extend the language. External link: Online copy in Nucleic Acids Res. 10(1) Jan 11 1982 Special issue "devoted to the applications of computers to research on nucleic acids" view details |