code: def alignfast(names, seqs):
      
      matfile = op.join(datadir, "blosum80.mat")
      cmd = "poa -read_fasta - -pir stdout {0} -tolower -silent -hb -fuse_all".format(matfile)
      p = Popen(cmd, shell=True, stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=STDOUT, close_fds=True)
      s = ""
      for i, j in zip(names, seqs):
          s += "\n".join((i, j)) + "\n"
      return p.communicate(s)[0]
docs: Performs MUSCLE alignments on cluster and returns output as string