Following on from my last post about turning on translations in the sequence Editor, I thought I should point out how to display amino acid translations using the 3-letter code rather than the default single-letter code. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time remembering that “W” is the single-letter IUPAC code for tryptophan, whereas “Trp” is pretty obvious. To get to the setting, choose MacVector | Preferences to open up the preferences dialog. Switch to the Text View tab and click on the three button in the Characters group;
![TripleLetterAACodeButton.png](http://macvector.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/TripleLetterAACodeButton.png)
When you close the Preferences window, or click Apply, any open windows will update to show the new settings. So, the sequence Editor will show the three letter codes;
![pBR322Editor3LetterCode.png](http://macvector.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/pBR322Editor3LetterCode.png)
…and any annotated text windows will also show the 3 letter codes;
![pBR322AnnotatedText3LetterCode.png](http://macvector.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/pBR322AnnotatedText3LetterCode.png)
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