HSL Bioinformatics Series - BLAST Tips and Tricks (Workshop 2 of 3)

Instructor: Diane C. Rein, PhD, MLS This two-hour practical hands-on workshop will focus to adjusting those BLAST algorithmic parameters which act as filters for BLAST, along with other “advanced commands” that can be used to enhance BLAST results. The workshop will concentrate primarily to nucleotide and protein BLASTing, but will cover other specialized BLAST searches based upon participant interest and available time. The new NCBI multiple alignment tool, COBALT, will also be introduced. A combination handout/workbook will be given to workshop participants that will cover the workshop material.

Following this workshop you will be able to:

• Constrain BLAST searches to specific sequence segments of your query using a variety of different methods.
• Limit the initial BLAST search to specific organisms, tissues of expression, molecule types or databases.
• Restrict the BLAST results to specific organisms, tissues of expression, molecule types or databases to make your analysis easier.
• Use filtering options to lower the number of statistically significant but meaningless hits to query sequences.
• Batch BLAST.