BioPAIthon is a fork of Biopython, the long-running international association of developers of freely available Python tools for computational molecular biology.
The fork exists to try one thing differently. BioPAIthon accepts contributions from any capable contributor - human, computational intelligence, AI, or chimp - and judges each patch on its merits rather than on the nature of its author. See AGENTS.md for what that means in practice.
Everything else is Biopython. The Bio package, the public API, the test
suite and the licence are all unchanged, import Bio works exactly as it
did, and we intend to keep tracking upstream.
Credit for essentially all of the code here belongs to the Biopython contributors; the original copyright notices and licence remain in place. BioPAIthon is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Biopython Project, so please do not report problems with this fork to upstream.
This README is intended primarily for people interested in working with the source code, from our repository on GitHub https://github.com/dbolser/BioPAIthon
Upstream's user-centric documentation, The Biopython Tutorial and Cookbook, and API documentation, still describes this fork accurately.
The NEWS file summarises the changes in each release, alongside the DEPRECATED file which notes API breakages.
This package is open source software made available under generous terms. Please see the LICENSE file for further details.
BioPAIthon exists because the Biopython Project spent more than twenty years building it. 373 people are named in CONTRIB.rst, and that list is preserved here unchanged, as is the full release history in NEWS and every copyright notice in the source.
This fork changes a contribution policy. It does not change who wrote the software, and it is not a criticism of the people who did. Upstream restricted AI-assisted contributions for a reason we think is entirely legitimate: protecting "good first issue" tickets as mentoring opportunities for new human contributors, in the hope they stay. We disagree about the means, not the goal. Reasonable projects can land in different places on this, and Biopython's maintainers are under no obligation to agree with us.
Upstream Biopython is actively maintained and lives at https://biopython.org. We track it, and we would be glad to see this fork become unnecessary.
If you use BioPAIthon in work contributing to a scientific publication, please cite Biopython. Essentially all of the code here was written by the Biopython contributors, and academic citation is how that work is credited:
Cock, P.J.A. et al. Biopython: freely available Python tools for computational molecular biology and bioinformatics. Bioinformatics 2009 Jun 1; 25(11) 1422-3 https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btp163 pmid:19304878
Several Biopython modules have their own publications, listed at https://biopython.org - please cite those as well where they apply.
Do not cite BioPAIthon instead of Biopython. If you need to record which fork you used, cite the paper above and mention the fork separately, as you would any other software version detail. Nothing about this fork changes who did the scientific work.
BioPAIthon is published on PyPI as biopaithon. The current release is a
developmental release, so pip needs --pre to select it:
pip install --pre biopaithon
Note that BioPAIthon installs the same Bio package that Biopython does, so
the two conflict and cannot be used side by side in one environment. Use a
virtual environment if you need both.
Binary wheels are published for CPython 3.10 to 3.14 on Linux (x86-64 and aarch64, both manylinux and musllinux), macOS (Intel and Apple silicon) and Windows, so installation needs no compiler. A source distribution is published too.
Upstream Biopython is on PyPI under its own name:
pip install biopython
As a developer or potential contributor, you may wish to download, build and install BioPAIthon yourself. This is described below.
We currently recommend using Python 3.13 from https://www.python.org
Biopython is currently supported and tested on the following Python implementations:
- Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13 and 3.14 -- see https://www.python.org
- PyPy3.10 v7.3.17 -- or later, see https://www.pypy.org
Biopython requires NumPy (see https://www.numpy.org) which will be installed automatically if you install Biopython with pip (see below for compiling Biopython yourself).
Depending on which parts of Biopython you plan to use, there are a number of other optional Python dependencies, which can be installed later if needed:
- ReportLab, see https://www.reportlab.com/opensource/ (optional)
This package is only used in
Bio.Graphics, so if you do not need this functionality, you will not need to install this package. - matplotlib, see https://matplotlib.org/ (optional)
Bio.Phylouses this package to plot phylogenetic trees. - networkx, see https://networkx.github.io/ (optional) and
pygraphviz or pydot, see https://pygraphviz.github.io/ and
https://code.google.com/p/pydot/ (optional)
These packages are used for certain niche functions in
Bio.Phylo. - rdflib, see https://github.com/RDFLib/rdflib (optional)
This package is used in the CDAO parser under
Bio.Phylo. - psycopg2, see https://initd.org/psycopg/ (optional) or
PyGreSQL (pgdb), see https://www.pygresql.org/ (optional)
These packages are used by
BioSQLto access a PostgreSQL database. - MySQL Connector/Python, see https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/python/
This package is used by
BioSQLto access a MySQL database, and is supported on PyPy too. - mysqlclient, see https://github.com/PyMySQL/mysqlclient-python (optional)
This is a fork of the older MySQLdb and is used by
BioSQLto access a MySQL database. It is supported by PyPy.
In addition there are a number of useful third party tools you may wish to install such as standalone NCBI BLAST, EMBOSS or ClustalW.
Most people should use the pre-compiled wheels described above. If you need to compile BioPAIthon yourself, the following are required at compile time:
Python including development header files like
python.h, which on Linux are often not installed by default (trying looking for and installing a package namedpython-devorpython-develas well as thepythonpackage).Appropriate C compiler for your version of Python, for example GCC on Linux, or MSVC on Windows. For Windows, you must install the 'Visual Studio Build Tools' and select the 'Desktop development with C++' workload. For macOS, use Apple's command line tools, which can be installed with the terminal command:
xcode-select --install
This will offer to install Apple's XCode development suite - you can, but it is not needed and takes a lot of disk space.
Then either download and decompress our source code, or fetch it using git. Now change directory to the Biopython source code folder and run:
pip install -e . --group dev cd Tests python run_tests.py
Substitute python with your specific version if required, for example
python3, or pypy3.
To exclude tests that require an internet connection (and which may take a
long time), use the --offline option:
cd Tests python run_tests.py --offline
Biopython includes a suite of regression tests to check if everything is running correctly. To run the tests, go to the biopython source code directory and type:
pip install -e . --group dev cd Tests python run_tests.py
If you want to skip the online tests (which is recommended when doing repeated testing), use:
cd Tests python run_tests.py --offline
Do not panic if you see messages warning of skipped tests:
test_DocSQL ... skipping. Install MySQLdb if you want to use Bio.DocSQL.
This most likely means that a package is not installed. You can ignore this if it occurs in the tests for a module that you were not planning on using. If you did want to use that module, please install the required dependency and re-run the tests.
Some of the tests may fail due to network issues, this is often down to
chance or a service outage. If the problem does not go away on
re-running the tests, you can use the --offline option.
There is more testing information in the Biopython Tutorial & Cookbook.
Biopython 1.61 introduced a new warning, Bio.BiopythonExperimentalWarning,
which is used to mark any experimental code included in the otherwise
stable Biopython releases. Such 'beta' level code is ready for wider
testing, but still likely to change, and should only be tried by early
adopters in order to give feedback via the biopython-dev mailing list.
We'd expect such experimental code to reach stable status within one or two releases, at which point our normal policies about trying to preserve backwards compatibility would apply.
While we try to ship a robust package, bugs inevitably pop up. If you are having problems that might be caused by a bug in Biopython, it is possible that it has already been identified. Update to the latest release if you are not using it already, and retry. If the problem persists, please search our bug database and our mailing lists to see if it has already been reported (and hopefully fixed), and if not please do report the bug. We can't fix problems we don't know about ;)
Issue tracker: https://github.com/dbolser/BioPAIthon/issues
Please report bugs in this fork there, not to upstream. If you can reproduce the problem against upstream Biopython as well, then it is an upstream bug and belongs at https://github.com/biopython/biopython/issues instead.
If you suspect the problem lies within a parser, it is likely that the data
format has changed and broken the parsing code. (The text BLAST and GenBank
formats seem to be particularly fragile.) Thus, the parsing code in
Biopython is sometimes updated faster than we can build Biopython releases.
You can get the most recent parser by pulling the relevant files (e.g. the
ones in Bio.SeqIO or Bio.Blast) from our git repository. However, be
careful when doing this, because the code in github is not as well-tested
as released code, and may contain new dependencies.
In any bug report, please let us know:
- Which operating system and hardware (32 bit or 64 bit) you are using
- Python version
- Biopython version (or git commit/date)
- Traceback that occurs (the full error message)
And also ideally:
- Example code that breaks
- A data file that causes the problem
BioPAIthon accepts contributions from anyone, and anything, able to write a good patch - human, computational intelligence, AI, or chimp. We are always looking for help with code development, documentation writing, technical administration, and whatever else comes up.
If you wish to contribute, please first read AGENTS.md, which sets out the standard every contribution is held to regardless of its author, and then CONTRIBUTING.rst for the practicalities.
Upstream Biopython is run by volunteers from all over the world, with many types of backgrounds. Their web site is https://biopython.org and their mailing lists are at https://biopython.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
README.rst-- This file.NEWS.rst-- Release notes and news.LICENSE.rst-- What you can do with the code.CONTRIB.rst-- An (incomplete) list of people who helped Biopython in one way or another.CONTRIBUTING.rst-- The practicalities of contributing.AGENTS.md-- Who may contribute (everyone) and the standard every contribution is held to.CLAUDE.mdpoints here.DEPRECATED.rst-- Contains information about modules in Biopython that were removed or no longer recommended for use, and how to update code that uses those modules.MANIFEST.in-- Configures which files to include in releases.pyproject.toml-- Project metadata and build configuration.Bio/-- The main code base code.BioSQL/-- Code for using Biopython with BioSQL databases.Doc/-- Documentation.Scripts/-- Miscellaneous, possibly useful, standalone scripts.Tests/-- Regression testing code including sample data files.