Technology or method
Sequence alignment
Lining up DNA or protein sequences to find similarities. Dynamic programming finds the best global or local alignment.
BLAST
A fast heuristic tool for finding similar sequences in large databases.Source: Altschul et al., 1990
Technology or method
How BLAST connects
BLAST uses
Technology or method
Biological databases
Public archives such as GenBank for sequences, UniProt for proteins and the Protein Data Bank for structures.
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Sources & further reading
The explanations on this page are our own summaries of these sources. Follow a link to read the original; if anything here disagrees with it, the original wins. How we choose and check sources.
Basic local alignment search tool (opens the original in a new tab)
Altschul SF, Gish W, Miller W, et al. (1990). Journal of Molecular Biology 215:403-410.
BLAST, the fast heuristic search used to compare sequences against databases.
Peer-reviewedPrimary research