Talk:Bioinformatics/base count

rare or minor bases

I wrote the REXX version to allow other bases,   which would also allow the program to catch typos   (as they would show up in the counts, whether valid or not).

─────────────────────────── from elsewhere on the 'net:

Common Bases:

   A = Adenine 
   C = Cytosine 
   G = Guanine 
   T = Thymine 

Rare or Minor Bases:

In addition to four common bases (ATGC), certain other unusual bases of purine and pyrimidine derivatives, called rare or minor bases, occur in small amounts in some DNA. In some viruses uracil occurs in place of thymine in DNA.

-- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 22:13, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

The Python just counts the character types too, and doesn't check that they are ACG or T only - easier to code, and enough for this task, I thought. --Paddy3118 (talk) 22:29, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Yuppers, that way, you'd catch typos easier.   I would've made that part of the requirements, after all, some of those DNA strings are ginormous, and if a site is using an optical reader,   errors are easy to creep in.     -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 22:35, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

base count

In the task's preamble,   it is stated in the task requirement #1:

   ...  as well as the total count of bases in the string. 

I could tell just by a quick look at the DNA string.     There were (count 'em) four bases in the string.   English is fun.     -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 00:07, 26 November 2019 (UTC)