Do you ever wish there was a quick way to hide partial or poor quality sequences from a multiple alignment view? NCBI’s Multiple Sequence Alignment Viewer (MSAV) now allows you to do just that with an easy hide/show rows feature! Hidden rows won’t be shown in the PDF/SVG download, and these sequences will not be included in the FASTA alignment download file.

You can easily manage which rows are shown through the menu available by right-clicking on a row or through the Rows dialog (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The MSA viewer showing the options for hiding or showing rows. Right clicking any sequence row provides options for hiding single or selected rows or restoring hidden rows. You can also manage rows through the edit row dialog activated by clicking the “Rows” button next to the gear icon at the upper-right. Check or uncheck sequences to add or remove them from the display. The “Rows shown” status message at the lower-right of the MSAV indicates the total number of rows in the sequence alignment and the number displayed.

Keep in mind that hiding rows does not re-calculate the alignment, so it’s important to know if any rows have been hidden from your current view. The “Rows shown” message at the lower-right indicates whether you are displaying all rows.

You can find more tips on using the MSA Viewer, including information about anchors, consensus, and coloring settings in our user guide. Please get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions using the Feedback link on the page or writing to the NCBI Help Desk.