SUMMARY: There are many programs that can read the secondary structure of an RNA molecule and draw a diagram, but hardly any that can cope with 10(3) bases. RNAfdl is slow but capable of producing intersection-free diagrams for ribosome-sized structures, has a graphical user interface for adjustments and produces output in common formats. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Source code is available under the GNU General Public License v3.0 at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rnafdl for Linux and similar systems or Windows using MinGW. RNAfdl is implemented in C, uses the Cairo 2D graphics library and offers both command line and graphical user interfaces. CONTACT: [email protected]

MOTIVATION: To recognize remote relationships between RNA molecules, one must be able to align structures without regard to sequence similarity. We have implemented a method, which is swift [O(n(2))], sensitive and tolerant of large gaps and insertions. Molecules are broken into overlapping fragments, which are characterized by their memberships in a probabilistic classification based on local geometry and H-bonding descriptors. This leads to a probabilistic similarity measure that is used in a conventional dynamic programming method. RESULTS: Examples are given of database searching, the detection of structural similarities, which would not be found using sequence based methods, and comparisons with a previously published approach. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Source code (C and perl) and binaries for linux are freely available at www.zbh.uni-hamburg.de/fries.