Dear Dr. Gilbert,

I am submitting a software package called MatGAT (Matrix Global Alignment
Tool) to the Indiana Biology software archive. The attached software was
written by one of my students, Ledion Bitincka. The program is also
available for distribution at my own laboratory website, but we wanted to
allow for a larger distribution from the IUBIO Archive. 

MatGAT is a simple, easy to use similarity/identity matrix generator. It
calculates the similarity and identity between every pair of DNA or protein
sequences in a given data set without needing pre-alignment of the data.
The program performs a series of pairwise alignments, calculates similarity
and identity, and then places the results in a distance matrix that can be
directly transferred to MS Excel for further analysis. It is an ideal tool
for use in phylogenomic analyses. 

The attached zipped version of MatGAT runs on the Windows 98, NT, 2000, and
XP OS's . We have completed a Unix version of the software and are
finishing development on a Mac OS X version. We will submit these in the
future. 

I thank you for your help.

Sincerely,

Jim Campanella
Professor
Montclair State University
Dept. of Biology and Molecular Biology
Montclair, NJ 07043