Colorstock, SScolor, Raton:: RNA alignment visualization tools

Interactive examination of RNA multiple alignments for covariant mutations is a useful step in non-coding RNA sequence analysis. We present three parallel implementations of an RNA visualization metaphor: Colorstock, a command-line script using ANSI terminal color; SScolor, a Perl script that generates static HTML pages; and Raton, an AJAX web application generating dynamic HTML. Each tool can be used to color RNA alignments by secondary structure and to visually highlight compensatory mutations in stems.