[BioPython] Transcription

[Michael Fahy]

I just showed the BioPython tutorial to some of our Biology and Chemistry
faculty.  They pointed out that all the "Transcribe" function does is
replace each occurrence of "T" in the sequence with a "U".  The biologists
said that that is not what they mean by transcription.  They felt that each
nucleotide should have been replaced by the complementary nucleotide, and
that the resulting string should have been reversed.

This, they said, would be concordant with the way in which biologists use
the term "transcribe'.  It would not be hard to do, so why does BioPython do
what it does and call it transcription?

 

 

Michael Fahy

Mathematics and Computer Science

Chapman University

One University Drive

Orange, CA  92866

(714) 997-6879

fahy at chapman.edu