This document discusses BioPython modules for handling RNA sequences containing modified nucleosides. There are 115 known post-transcriptionally modified nucleosides in RNA and several nomenclature schemes exist. The solution involves cloning a branch of the BioPython repository containing an RNA alphabet with modified nucleotides and using it to represent sequences containing modifications like 2-O-methyloadenosine. Example applications presented are ModeRNA for RNA structure modeling and CompaRNA for benchmarking RNA structure prediction methods, both of which use open source tools including BioPython.