[Biopython] Could Bio.SeqIO write EMBL file?

[Peter]

On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Anne Pajon <ap12 at sanger.ac.uk> wrote:
> Dear,
>
> I'm reading EMBL file with Bio.SeqIO for adding an extra feature qualifier
> to each of the annotations, and would like to write the modified annotated
> sequence back to an EMBL file.
> ...
> While running the above I'm getting this error:
> Reading format 'embl' is supported, but not writing
>
> Is there a way around? I know from the documentation on the wiki that
> biopython does not have a writer for EMBL format. Is there a plan of having
> one in the future? I volunteer to test it, or if it does not exist yet I may
> be able to contribute writing it... thanks to let me know.
>
> Kind regards,
> Anne.

Hello Anne,

The intention was to eventually have both GenBank and EMBL output
working in SeqIO - and they should be able to share a lot of code.
However, out of practicality, GenBank output was prioritised (and
bar a few bits of annotation, seems to be working nicely). There
hadn't been much interest in EMBL output in comparison.

Getting something basic working shouldn't be too hard (id, features and
sequence), and having someone interested help test this would be very
valuable. Did you install Biopython from source? Are you happy using
git (to grab code for testing)? Neither is essential for trying out new
Python code, but would make things a bit simpler.

Also, what kind of organisms are you working with? What I'm getting
at here is how complex are the feature locations going to be?

Peter