What is BLAST?
BLAST® (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) is a set of similarity search programs designed to explore all of the available sequence databases regardless of whether the query is protein or DNA. The BLAST programs have been designed for speed, with a minimal sacrifice of sensitivity to distant sequence relationships. The scores assigned in a BLAST search have a well-defined statistical interpretation, making real matches easier to distinguish from random background hits. BLAST uses a heuristic algorithm that seeks local as opposed to global alignments and is therefore able to detect relationships among sequences that share only isolated regions of similarity (Altschul et al. 1990). For a better understanding of BLAST, you can refer to the BLAST Course, which explains the basics of the BLAST algorithm. There is also a description of BLAST services located here. Also for details on BLAST and theory of similarity search, see the References section.
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