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Use of BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool)

Use of BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool)

In this video tutorial we demonstrate the use of the similarity search engine BLAST, hosted by NCBI.

BLAST is a powerful tool used to search a database of DNA or protein sequences in order to find “hits” that are similar to a query sequence. BLAST is used for several purposes, including inferring the possible function of a protein.

The NCBI website includes a very user-friendly BLAST server through which one may search NCBI’s nucleotide and protein sequence databases.

In this video, Dr Christine Boinett will demonstrate many of the most useful applications of BLAST that are available on NCBI’s web server.

To get the most of this step, we recommend that you try to replicate the steps. You can do so by pausing the video and performing the tasks in your internet browser or you can watch it first and replicate the steps later.

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Bacterial Genomes I: From DNA to Protein Function Using Bioinformatics

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