Having a BLAST with Bioinformatics (and Avoiding BLASTphemy)

Overview

Journal Genome Biol

Specialties Biology
Genetics

Date 2001 Oct 13

PMID 11597340

Citations 33

Authors

A Pertsemlidis

J W Fondon 3rd

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Searching for similarities between biological sequences is the principal means by which bioinformatics contributes to our understanding of biology. Of the various informatics tools developed to accomplish this task, the most widely used is BLAST, the basic local alignment search tool. This article discusses the principles, workings, applications and potential pitfalls of BLAST, focusing on the implementation developed at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

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