Biopython 1.79 released!

Posted on June 3, 2021 by João Rodrigues

Biopython 1.79 has been released and is available from our website and PyPI.

This is the final release supporting Python version 3.6. It also supports Python versions 3.7, 3.8, and 3.9, as well as PyPy 3.6.1 v7.1.1.

The major changes in this version are listed below:

– The Seq and MutableSeq classes in Bio.Seq now inherit from the same base class, ensuring their mutual consistency. In addition, both classes now store sequence data as bytes and bytearray objects, respectively.

– Empty or unknown sequences can now be created directly by passing None to the Seq class, instead of using UnknownSeq. This latter class is now deprecated and will be removed in a future version of Biopython.

– A new module Bio.PDB.SASA implements the Shrake-Rupley algorithm to calculate solvent accessible areas natively, without requiring third-party tools such as DSSP or NACCESS.

– Other minor improvements to the Bio.PDB module include a new center_of_mass() method to calculate the center of mass or center of gravity of any Entity subclass (e.g. Structure, Chain, or Residue).

– Changes in the KEGG KGML_Pathway module now produce output files compliant with KGML v0.7.2. In addition, Bio.UniProt.GOA now parses GPI files version 1.2.

As in recent releases, more of our code is now explicitly available under either our original “Biopython License Agreement“, or the very similar but more commonly used “3-Clause BSD License“. See the LICENSE.rst file for more details.

Additionally, a number of small bugs and typos have been fixed with further additions to the test suite. There has been further work to follow the Python PEP8, PEP257 and best practice standard coding style, and more of the code style has been reformatted with the black tool.

Many thanks to the Biopython developers and community for making this release possible, especially the following contributors:

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