BLASTextend: Web-based Handy Tools to Extend BLAST Usage

Abstract

BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) designed by Altschul and coworkers has become one of the most, if not the most, popular bioinformatics tools in the world. As amount of molecular data grows exponentially, refinements in the BLAST programs as well as data filtration at pre- or post-database search have been implemented with the BLAST server at NCBI (National Center of Biotechnology Information, http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/). However, such refinements with the BLAST programs at NCBI still do not satisfy all users at specific circumstances. Here we designed BLASTextend, a web-based tool, to help users to further ”mine” the data in a lengthy BLAST outcome and furthermore, to be able to enhance BLAST searching efficiency with a custom database. This tool, powered by the BLAST programs downloaded from NCBI, consists of three major parts: (1) a database management system for users to upload or to delete a custom database for BLAST searching, (2) a BLAST result parsing tool to tabulate the resulted alignment information and (3) an integrated system to provide a single entry to run BLAST analysis, to manage custom database and to parse the BLAST results in one streamline. BLASTextend is made freely available to users at http://abrc.sinica.edu.tw:218/blast/.