bio-alignment-multiple

A toolkit for aligning three or more related DNA, RNA, or protein sequences in a multiple sequence alignment. It guides the choice between supported alignment programs based on sequence size, divergence, and intended analysis.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prepare sequences for phylogenetic trees, study conserved positions, compare evolutionary changes, or provide aligned input for downstream analyses.
Why use it?
Comparing many sequences by hand is impractical, and different alignment methods behave differently on large or highly divergent data.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/gptomics/bioskills/multiple-alignment
Any agent
npx skills add GPTomics/bioSkills --skill multiple-alignment
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/GPTomics/bioSkills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 66 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 8,524 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00066 $0.08524
Opus 5 $0.00033 $0.04262
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.01705
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00852

Measured 2d ago against content hash 9990410daea0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

bio-alignment-multiple scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (examples/codon_alignment.py, examples/run_msa.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

- Python: `subprocess.run()` wrapping CLI tools; BioPython `Bio.Align.Applications` was removed in BioPython 1.86 (verify with `pip show biopython`); use `subprocess` directly
Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

alignment/multiple-alignment/SKILL.md · 477 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 477 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Version Compatibility

Reference examples tested with: MAFFT 7.520+, MUSCLE 5.1+, ClustalOmega 1.2.4+, T-Coffee 13+, PAL2NAL 14+, BioPython 1.83+

Before using code patterns, verify installed versions match. If versions differ:

  • CLI: mafft --version, muscle -version, clustalo --version
  • Python: pip show biopython then help(module.function) to check signatures

If code throws errors, introspect the installed tool and adapt the example to match the actual CLI flags rather than retrying.

Multiple Sequence Alignment

"Align multiple sequences" -> Compute an optimal alignment of three or more homologous sequences using progressive, iterative, or consistency-based methods.

  • CLI: mafft (most versatile), muscle (highest accuracy), clustalo (scales well), t_coffee (consistency-based)
  • Python: subprocess.run() wrapping CLI tools; BioPython Bio.Align.Applications was removed in BioPython 1.86 (verify with pip show biopython); use subprocess directly

MSA Algorithm Taxonomy

When a tool is failing on a dataset, switch to a tool from a different algorithmic family rather than tuning flags. The six families and their characteristic failure modes:

Family Representative tools Best at Fails when
Progressive ClustalW, MAFFT FFT-NS-2 Fast, large datasets, similar lengths Early-stage gap errors propagate; no recovery
Iterative refinement MAFFT L-INS-i, MUSCLE3, PRRN Recovers from progressive errors at <2000 seqs Slow on >2000; still guide-tree dependent
Consistency-based T-Coffee, ProbCons Highest accuracy <100 seqs; integrates evidence O(N^2 to N^4) scaling; heavy compute
HMM-based HMMER hmmalign, ClustalOmega (HHalign), UPP, WITCH Adding sequences to a curated profile; fragmentary input Needs an existing high-quality profile or backbone
Divide-and-conquer PASTA, MAGUS, MUSCLE5 super5 Heterogeneous large datasets (>10k seqs) Sub-alignment merges can introduce artefacts
Structure or pLM-informed Foldmason, PROMALS3D, vcMSA, 3D-Coffee Dark proteome, <15% identity, dataset has structures Requires structures or a working pLM

Read the full file on GitHub · 477 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 477 lines · 66 tokens per session scan A 9990410daea0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bio-alignment-multiple is a skill published in the GitHub repository GPTomics/bioSkills (1,198 stars, last pushed 17d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 66 tokens to every session and 8,524 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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