We now have an idea on how to create a class in Python. For our FASTA reader we will use a very similar approach as the employee class created before. Based on the simplicity of the FASTA format it is easy to see what attributes we need in our class: sequence title (header) and sequence. That’s it. Speeding up, our class will look like this

class Fasta:
    def __init__(self, name, sequence):
        self.name = name
        self.sequence = sequence

That’s all we need for now. Of course we could include sequence length, sequence type, or any other relevant information as a class attribute. But we will stick with those for the time being. NOw that we have the class declared, we need to read the file and create instances of the Fasta class to store all our sequences.

We already know how to open and read a file and create functions. We put everything together in a simple script:

import sys
#class declaration with both attributes we need
class Fasta:
    def __init__(self, name, sequence):
        #this will store the sequence name
        self.name = name
        #this  will store the sequence itself
        self.sequence = sequence

#this function will receive the list with the file
#contents, create instances of the Fasta class as
#it scans the list, putting the sequence name on the
#first attribute and the sequence itself on the second
#attribute
def read_fasta(file):
    #we declare an empty list that will store all
    #Fasta class instances generated
    items = []
    index = 0
    for line in file:
    #we check to see if the line starts with a > sign
        if line.startswith(">"):
           #if so and our counter is large than 1
           #we add the created class instance to our list
           #a counter larger than 1 means we are reading
           #from sequences 2 and above
           if index >= 1:
               items.append(aninstance)
           index+=1
           #we add the line contents to a string
           name = line[:-1]
           #and initialize the string to store the sequence
           seq = ''
           #this creates a class instance and we add the attributes
           #which are the strings name and seq
           aninstance = Fasta(name, seq)
        else:
           #the line does not start with > so it has to be
           #a sequence line, so we increment the string and
           #add it to the created instance
            seq += line[:-1]
            aninstance = Fasta(name, seq)

    #the loop before reads everything but the penultimate
    #sequence is added at the end, so we need to add it
    #after the loop ends
    items.append(aninstance)
    #a list with all read sequences is returned
    return items

fastafile = open(sys.argv[1], 'r').readlines()
mysequences = read_fasta(fastafile)

print mysequences

for i in mysequences:
    print i.name

At first, it looks scary. But is not. There are many ways to create this loop and to read the sequences, and many ways to make this loop shorter. We will get there, eventually, but for starters this is OK. Basically, in the above script we have a Fasta class, a read_fasta function and a couple of lines to read a print the results. The read_fasta function basically checks all items of a list and see which is the first character of each item: a > sign indicates that the item should be parsed to the temporary name string, another character redirects the item to the sequence string. Instances are created on the fly and the attributes assigned as what was file content is being scanned.

In the end, just to be sure of what we accomplished with the function we print the list and loop through it and print the name of each sequence read. Notice that the loop counter/index is the one that receives the class attribute.

The biggest advantage of this way of reading FASTA files is that the class and the function are reusable. Basically we can create a file (for instance called readfasta.py) and import into another script and we have a FASTA reader ready to rock. We would need to tweak a little bit in order to catch exceptions, but with consistent FASTA files this would work fine.