TIP: Protein backtranslation aided by genetic algorithms

Summary: Several applications require the backtranslation of a protein sequence into a nucleic acid sequence. The degeneracy of the genetic code makes this process ambiguous; moreover, not every translation is equally viable. The usual answer is to mimic the codon usage of the target species; however, this does not capture all the relevant features of the 'genomic styles' from different taxa. The program TIP ('Traducción Inversa de Proteínas') applies genetic algorithms to improve the backtranslation, by minimizing the difference of some coding statistics with respect to their average value in the target. © Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved