[Biopython] Biopython 1.50 released

[Peter]

Dear all,

We are pleased to announce Biopython release 1.50, featuring some
significant additions since Biopython 1.49 was released late last
year.

GenomeDiagram by Leighton Pritchard has been integrated into Biopython
as the Bio.Graphics.GenomeDiagram module.

A new module Bio.Motif has been added, which is intended to replace
the existing Bio.AlignAce and Bio.MEME modules. Also have a look at
Bio.SwissProt and Bio.ExPASy and their revised parsers.

As noted in a previous news posting, Bio.SeqIO can now read and write
FASTQ and QUAL files used in second generation sequencing work. In
connection with this, our SeqRecord object has a new dictionary
attribute, letter_annotations, for per-letter-annotation information
like sequence quality scores or secondary structure predictions. Also,
the SeqRecord object can now be sliced to give a new SeqRecord
covering just part of the sequence.

Biopython 1.50 supports Python 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6. However, this is
expected to be the final version to support Python 2.3 (see this
previous announcement). Also, Biopython 1.50 should be the last
release to include our old deprecated parsing infrastructure (Martel
and Bio.Mindy).

We’ve also updated the Biopython Tutorial and Cookbook (also available
in PDF), and not just by adding our logo to the cover ;)
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.html
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.pdf

Thank you to everyone who tested the Biopython 1.50 beta release, and
to all our contributors.

Source distributions and Windows installers are available from the
downloads page on the Biopython website:
http://biopython.org/wiki/Download

-Peter, on behalf of the Biopython developers

P.S. This news post is online at
http://news.open-bio.org/news/2009/04/biopython-release-150/

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