DNA sequence in bacterial genomes

Question

[raminkm2000]

I am newbie in Bioinformatics. I have downloaded all the bacterial genomes (all.fna) from
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/Bacteria/

I have some questions about the genomes and I will be appreciated if you help me to find the appropriate answer.

Are the bacterial genomes for a single strand or double strand?

In case of single strand how can I obtain the inverse strand. Should I start to read from the last letter in the genome and change the letters A --> T, C-->G, G-->C and T-->A, or its not a matter if I start from the first vs last letter in the genome?

Answer 1

[Devon Ryan]

The opposite strand is the reverse complement of the forward (DNA is always written 5' to 3'). So the opposite of ATGC is GCAT.