VARIANT: a store and retrieval system for human haemoglobin variants

VARIANT, a FORTRAN 77 computer system for storing and retrieving the amino acid replacements in human haemoglobin variants on a multicriterion basis, is presented. The system is transportable and user-friendly, can easily be expanded and can also be used to create a database of the amino acid replacements in families of homologous proteins, becoming an efficient tool for evolutionary studies.