SLN (SYBYL Line Notation) is the most comprehensive and rich linear notation for representation of chemical objects of various kinds facilitating a wide range of cheminformatics algorithms. Though, it is not the most popular linear notation nowadays, SLN has capabilities for supporting the most challenging tasks of the present day cheminformatics research. We present Ambit-SLN, a new software library for cheminformatics processing of chemical objects via linear notation SLN. Ambit-SLN is developed as a part of the cheminformatics platform AMBIT. It is an open-source tool, distributed under LGPL license, written in Java and based on the Chemistry Development Kit. Ambit-SLN includes a parser for the full SLN syntax of chemical structures and substructure search queries including support for macro and Markush atoms, global and local dictionaries and user defined properties which can be stored and used by the Ambit data model. The Ambit-SLN library includes functionalities for substructure matching based on SLN query strings and utilities for conversion of SLN objects to other chemical formats such as SMILES and SMARTS. The functionality for Markush atom expansion can be used for generation of combinatorial structure sets.
Keywords: Ambit; Markush structure; SLN; cheminformatics; linear notation; structure conversion; structure representation; substructure searching.
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