This page describes how to install a set of Perl scripts designed to identify members of known riboswitch classes in genomic sequences. It accompanies a Methods in Molecular Biology protocol chapter that explains how to use these scripts. This protocol may also be useful for analyzing other structured RNAs, such as those found in the Rfam database, or for investigating new regulatory RNA motifs, such as might be predicted by CMfinder.
libGD is required to produce drawings of the genomic contexts of putative RNA structure matches. Download and install according to the directions on your system.
Several additional Perl modules from are required for the riboswitch perl scripts. You can download and install them directly from CPAN. Alternately, on MacOS X, you can use the following command sequence:
>sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell
>Password: ********
>install Storable
>install GD
The GD module requires libGD to be installed and is only necessary for producing genomic context drawings. If you encounter any other messages of the form: "Can't locate module.pm
in @INC", try installing module
from CPAN.
As of December 2007, neither the stable nor development releases of BioPerl (1.4.0 or 1.5.2) includes the necessary modules for parsing Infernal search results or manipulating Stockholm alignments. Therefore, you will need to download and install the current CVS version of bioperl-live. Either follow the Getting BioPerl instructions or try this link to download directly.
Download the riboswitch Perl scripts.
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version 1 | 6 January 2008 |
Each Perl script has POD documentation. Either open the script a text editor to view it or use one of these commands:
> perldoc genome_context.pl
> genome_context.pl --man
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