MELTING, computing the melting temperature of nucleic acid duplex.

MELTING computes the enthalpy and entropy of an oligonucleotide duplex helix-coil transition, and then its melting temperature. The program uses the method of nearest-neighbours. The set of thermodynamic parameters can be easily customized. The program provides several correction methods for the concentration of salt. MELTING is a free program, available at no cost and open-source. Perl scripts are provided to show how MELTING can be used to construct more ambitious programs. MELTING is available for several platforms (http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/neubiomol/meltinghome.html) and is accessible via a www server (http://bioweb.pasteur.fr/seqanal/interfaces/melting.html). nl223@cus.cam.ac.uk