MUSCLE is a program for creating multiple alignments of amino acid or nucleotide sequences.
MUSCLE stands for MUltiple Sequence Comparison by Log- Expectation. MUSCLE is claimed to achieve both better average accuracy and better speed than ClustalW2 or T-Coffee, depending on the chosen options.
In the authors’ tests, MUSCLE achieved the highest scores of all tested programs on several alignment accuracy benchmarks, and is also one of the fastest programs available.
Key Features
- Three different protein profile scoring functions are supported:
- log-expectation score.
- sum of pairs score using either the PAM200 matrix.
- VTML240 matrix.
- Diagonal optimization.
- Anchor optimization.
- MUSCLE uses FASTA format for both input and output formats.
- For output only, it also offers CLUSTALW, MSF, HTML, Phylip sequential and Phylip interleaved formats.
Website: www.drive5.com/muscle
Support: Documentation
Developer: Robert C. Edgar
License: Public domain
MUSCLE is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Biology Tools | |
|---|---|
| EMBOSS | The European Molecular Biology Open Software Suite |
| NAMD | Parallel, object-oriented molecular dynamics |
| GROMACS | Molecular dynamics simulator, with building and analysis tools |
| VMD | Displays, animates, and analyzes large biomolecular systems 3-D graphics |
| simuPOP | Forward-time population genetics simulation environment |
| MUSCLE | MUltiple Sequence Comparison by Log-Expectation |
| SeaView | Graphical user interface for molecular phyologeny |
| SeqViz | DNA, RNA, and protein sequence viewer |
| TREE-PUZZLE | Reconstruction of phylogenetic trees by maximum likelihood |
| TreeView X | Displays and prints phylogenetic trees |
| CellProfiler | Image analysis application for researchers |
| napari | Python-based image viewer |
| COPASI | Biochemical systems simulator |
| VCell | Modeling and simulation framework |
| NEURON | Build and run biophysically detailed models |
| NEST | Simulator for spiking neural network models |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |


Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.