[Biopython-dev] Simpler SeqRecord creation

[Brad Chapman]

Peter and Michiel;

> > If the SeqRecord __init__ checked for a plain string as
> > the sequence, it could automatically upgrade it into a
> > Seq object with the default argument, thus:
> > 
> > from Bio.SeqRecord import SeqRecord
> > rec = SeqRecord("ACGT", id="Test")

> Simpler SeqRecord creation is good in itself, but I wouldn't spend too
> much time on int. If hopefully we some day deprecate alphabets, then a
> Seq object reduces to a string anyway.

Accepting strings seems like a good way to start a transition from
Seq objects to standard strings. +1 for this.

It would also be useful if the defaults for id, name and description
were empty strings instead of "<unknown whatever>." These don't seem
especially useful, and when generating SeqRecords and writing them 
to Fasta, this helps avoid having to explicitly set descriptions to
an empty string.

Brad