This workshop concluded on October 14, 2021. Workshop materials are available here.

NCBI’s BLAST is the most widely used bioinformatics tool in the world.  It was designed to use a nucleotide or protein sequence to search and quickly find similar sequences in very large databases.  While originally designed for studying evolutionary relationships, BLAST is now often used for identification of:  the gene name and/or source organism of the sequence, related sequences from other organisms (homologs), as well as the location of a sequence within a larger reference sequence, such as a chromosome or genome.

This workshop is suitable both for beginner Web BLAST users and those who would like some tips and tricks to enhance their ability to use this powerful bioinformatics tool. The topics we cover in this hands-on Web BLAST workshop come directly from feedback and questions we’ve received from people like you.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how to:

• Choose the best BLAST program and database for your goal
• Limit your search to a specific taxonomic group
• Adjust search parameters to refine your search
• Customize and download the search results
• Display your BLAST results in an interactive sequence viewer

We will also discuss when web BLAST is not appropriate for your goals.

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