BLAST

BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) - A bioinformatic tool (algorithm) for locally aligning amino acid sequences of proteins or DNA nucleotides. BLAST allows researchers to compare the sequence of sequences with the sequences contained in biological databases and evaluate their similarity.

Different types of BLAST are used to compare different types of sequences. For example, after discovering an unknown gene in a mouse, they search the base for the human genome for similar genes. BLAST will find similar sequences in the database with predetermined parameters (such as degree of similarity). Easy to use is a useful tool. The designers of the algorithm were Stephen Altschul, Warren Gish, Webb Miller, Eugene Myers, and David J. Lipman of the National Institutes of Health. They published their results in the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1990. information

BLAST is one of the most used programs of its kind, due to the use of heuristic mechanisms and much faster performance as opposed to finding optimal alignment.

Before parsing the BLAST or FASTA algorithm, it was a hassle to search large biological databases (such as the Smith-Waterman Algorithm) and slow as it involved comparing whole sequences.

While BLAST works fast, it does not ensure that it will be the optimal match for the database query, Smith-Waterman's algorithm gives it a certainty at the expense of a lot of computer resources and time.

BLAST works in a much shorter time than FASTA because it only takes into account the more important parts of the sequence. Action

BLAST uses heuristic methods to find similar sequences without comparing the entire sequence but only shorter fragments of both sequences. After finding the first global match, BLAST begins to align sequences locally. BLAST is trying to find strings of the same letters, making them as long as possible, an important BLAST element. For example, the GLKFA sequence has three three letter words, GLK, LKF, KFA.

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