title: ANT: Software for Generating and Evaluating Degenerate Codons for Natural and Expanded Genetic Codes.
abstract: The Ambiguous Nucleotide Tool (ANT) is a desktop application that generates and evaluates degenerate codons. Degenerate codons are used to represent DNA positions that have multiple possible nucleotide alternatives. This is useful for protein engineering and directed evolution, where primers specified with degenerate codons are used as a basis for generating libraries of protein sequences. ANT is intuitive and can be used in a graphical user interface or by interacting with the code through a defined application programming interface. ANT comes with full support for nonstandard, user-defined, or expanded genetic codes (translation tables), which is important because synthetic biology is being applied to an ever widening range of natural and engineered organisms. The Python source code for ANT is freely distributed so that it may be used without restriction, modified, and incorporated in other software or custom data pipelines.
authors.forename: Martin K M
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Engqvist
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nielsen
mesh_terms: D003062:Codon / Q000235:genetics*; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics*; D011381:Programming Languages; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*; D012985:Software Design
chemical_list: D003062:Codon; D004247:DNA
keywords: ambiguous nucleotide; degenerate codon; mutagenesis; protein engineering; software; synthetic biology