Multiple sequence alignment a quick tour

Sequence alignment has a lot of significance in the field of bioinformatics. Since multiple sequence alignment (MSA) carries more information than pairwise alignment of the sequences, it has more number of applications. In the past few decades many algorithms and tools have been developed for the computation of multiple sequence alignment. However, accuracy of MSA still remains an open problem for further research. As more and more experimental data is being generated through sequencing technologies of second generation, there is an urgent need to develop tools that make use of integrative methods to derive biologically meaningful information from these immense data and use it to improve the accuracy of MSA. MSA tools that can scale upto the full length genome will also find wide applications in the near future.