BLAST

Introduction

In bioinformatics, BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) is an algorithm for comparing primary biological sequence information, such as the amino-acid sequences of proteins or the nucleotides of DNA sequences. A BLAST search enables a researcher to compare a query sequence with a library or database of sequences, and identify library sequences that resemble the query sequence above a certain threshold.

Installed version

The currently installed version is 2.2.26 and version 2.6.0.

Available Commands

BLAST offers three categories of applications:

• search tools: blastn, blastp, blastx, tblastx, tblastn, psiblast, rpsblast, rpstblastn
• BLAST database tools: makeblastdb, blastdb_aliastool, makeprofiledb, blastdbcmd
• sequence filtering tools: segmasker, dustmasker, windowmasker

Using BLAST with the HPC Cluster

If you want to find out more about BLAST on the HPC Cluster, you can use the command

module spider blast

This will show you basic informations e.g. a short description and the currently installed version.

To load the desired version of the module, use the command, e.g.

module load BLAST/2.6.0-Linux_x86_64 

Always remember: this command is case sensitive!

Documentation

The full documentation can be found here.

Direct link to the command line manual (PDF viewer required): BLAST® Command Line Applications User Manual