The DNA-sequence-file can be in a conventional format, in FASTA format, in EMBL format or in GenBank format (see the complete syntax from INFOBIOGEN).

Conventional format

a title (character string) followed by the character "#" and then by the DNA sequence.

Fasta format

a single-line title starting with the character '>', followed by the DNA sequence.

EMBL format

• the key-word ID followed by the title,
• the key-word SQ followed by the DNA sequence.

GenBank format

• the key-word LOCUS followed by the title,
• the key-word ORIGIN followed by the DNA sequence.

The title: it must have at least 5 characters and the first word must be different from 'LOCUS'. The first 297 characters will be used in the output.

The DNA sequence: it is a character sequence such that

• lower-case and upper-case letters are not distinguished,
• numbers are ignored, like blanks, return and tab characters,
• letters among a,c,g,t are valid bases,
• r,y,w,s,m,k,h,b,v,d,n,'.' are codes for unknown bases,
• z is particular to R'MES: it codes for breaks between two pieces that have been concatened and it is considered like an unknown base,
• any other characters are erroneous.