What functionality does MEGA provide?

MEGA, which stands for Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis, primarily specializes in conducting both automatic and manual sequence alignment. This functionality is critical in the field of molecular biology and bioinformatics, as sequence alignment serves to identify regions of similarity that may indicate functional, structural, or evolutionary relationships between the sequences. By providing tools for both automatic alignment, which uses algorithms to quickly align large sequences, and manual alignment, allowing for fine-tuning by the researcher, MEGA facilitates in-depth analysis of genetic data, making it invaluable for tasks like phylogenetic analysis and evolutionary studies.

The other choices involve various aspects of genetic research, but they do not reflect the core functionalities of MEGA. Creating online databases for genetic information is more aligned with bioinformatics platforms that focus on data storage and retrieval rather than direct sequence analysis. Designing custom DNA probes pertains to laboratory techniques in genetics but is not a feature of MEGA. Calculating protein folding sequences involves computational biology approaches that are generally distinct from the functionalities provided by MEGA, which focuses on sequence data rather than protein structure predictions.