A graphical method is presented for displaying the patterns in a set of aligned sequences. The characters representing the sequence are stacked on top of each other for each position in the aligned sequences. The height of each letter is made proportional to its frequency, and the letters are sorted so the most common one is on top. The height of the entire stack is then adjusted to signify the information content of the sequences at that position. From these`sequence logos', one can determine not only the consensus sequence but also the relative frequency of bases and the information content (measured in bits) at every position in a site or sequence. The logo displays both signi cant residues and subtle sequence patterns. INTRODUCTION A logo is \a single piece of type bearing two or more usually separate elements" 1]. In this paper, we use logos to display aligned sets of sequences. Sequence logos concentrate the following information into a single graphic 2]: 1. The general consensus of the sequences.
One of the first of these were Sequence Logos REF .
Sequence Logos: A New Way to Display Consensus Sequences
Nucleic Acids Res
Medicine Biology