Reverse complementary

Renesh Bedre    less than 1 minute read

What is Reverse complementary?

  • In a DNA molecule, the two antiparallel strands (positive or 5’-> 3’ and negative or 3’-> 5’) are complementary to each other
  • As per standard notation, we write the DNA sequence in 5’-> 3’ orientation. Therefore, to represent a sequence of the negative strand in 5’-> 3’ orientation we need to perform a reverse complementary of positive strand (e.g. reverse or left primer)



How to obtain reverse complementary of DNA sequence?

# you can use interactive python interpreter, jupyter notebook, spyder or python code
# I am using interactive python interpreter (Python 3.7)
# find reverse complemenatry of a given DNA sequence
>>> from bioinfokit import analys
>>> analys.rev_com(seq="AGTCAGTAACTAG")
# output: CTAGTTACTGACT

# if you have sequences in a fasta file
>>> analys.rev_com(file="test.fa")
# output will be saved in same directory (output_revcom.fasta)

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