LAUSR

Motivation: Software in structural bioinformatics has mainly been application driven. To favor practitioners seeking off‐the‐shelf applications, but also developers seeking advanced building blocks to develop novel applications, we undertook the design of the Structural Bioinformatics Library (SBL, http://sbl.inria.fr), a generic C ++/python cross‐platform software library targeting complex problems in structural bioinformatics. Its tenet is based on a modular design offering a rich and versatile framework allowing the development of novel applications requiring well specified complex operations, without compromising robustness and performances. Results: The SBL involves four software components (1–4 thereafter). For end‐users, the SBL provides ready to use, state‐of‐the‐art (1) applications to handle molecular models defined by unions of balls, to deal with molecular flexibility, to model macro‐molecular assemblies. These applications can also be combined to tackle integrated analysis problems. For developers, the SBL provides a broad C ++ toolbox with modular design, involving core (2) algorithms, (3) biophysical models and (4) modules, the latter being especially suited to develop novel applications. The SBL comes with a thorough documentation consisting of user and reference manuals, and a bugzilla platform to handle community feedback. Availability and Implementation: The SBL is available from http://sbl.inria.fr Contact: [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.