Basic Local Alignment
Search Tool
BLAST
Why Use BLAST?
Finding Model Organisms for Study
of Disease
Can yeast be used as a model
organism to study cystic fibrosis?
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Model Organisms
• Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder
that affects humans
– If yeast contain a protein that is related
(homologous) to the protein involved in
cystic fibrosis
– Then yeast can be used as a model
organism to study this disease
• Study of the protein in yeast will tell us about
the function of the protein in humans
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BLAST helps you to find
homologous genes and proteins
Homologous Proteins (or genes)
• Have a common ancestor (they’re related)
• Have similar structures
• Have similar functions
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Criteria for considering two
sequences to be homologous
• Proteins are homologous if
– Their amino acid sequences are at least
25% identical
• DNA sequences are homologous if
– they are at least 70% identical
– Note that sequences must be over 100 a.a.
(or bp) in length
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Whenever possible, it is better
to compare proteins
than to compare genes
What does BLAST do?
BLAST compares sequences
• BLAST takes a query sequence
• Compares it with millions of sequences in the
Genbank databases
– By constructing local alignments
• Lists those that appear to be similar to the query
sequence
– The “hit list”
• Tells you why it thinks they are homologs
– BLAST makes suggestions
– YOU make the conclusions
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How do I input a query
into BLAST?
Choose which “flavor” of BLAST to
use
• BLAST comes in many “flavors”
– Protein BLAST (BLASTp)
• Compares a protein query with sequences in
GenBank protein database
– Nucleotide BLAST (BLASTn)
• Compare nucleotide query with sequences in
GenBank nucleotide database
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Enter your “query” sequence
• A sequence can be input as a (an)
– FASTA format sequence
– Accession number
– Protein blast can only accept amino acid
sequences
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Choose search set
• Choose which database to search
– Default is non-redundant protein
sequences (nr)
• Searches all databases that contain protein
sequences
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Choose organism
• Default is all organisms represented in
databases
• Use this to limit your search to one
organism (eg. Yeast)
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BLAST off!!
• Click on the BLAST button at the
bottom of the page!
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How do I interpret the
results of a BLAST search?
BLAST creates local alignments
• What is a local alignment?
– BLAST looks for similarities between
regions of two sequences
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The BLAST output then
describes how these aligned
regions are similar
• How long are the aligned segments?
• Did BLAST have to introduce gaps in order to
align the segments?
• How similar are the aligned segments?
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The BLAST Output
The Graphic Display
1. How good is the match?
• Red = excellent!
• Pink = pretty good
• Green = OK, but look at other factors
• Blue = bad
• Black = really bad!
2. How long are the matched segments?
Longer = better
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The hit list
• BLAST lists the best matches (hits)
– For each hit, BLAST provides:
• Accession number – links to Genbank flatfile
• Description
• “G” = genome link
• E-value
– An indicator of how good a match to the query
sequence
• Score
– Link to an alignment
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What is an E-value?
• E-value
– The chance that the match could be
random
– The lower the E-value, the more significant
the match
• E = 10-4 is considered the cutoff point
• E = 0 means that the two sequences are
statistically identical
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Most people use the E- value
as their first indication of
similarity!
The Alignment
• Look for:
– Long regions of alignment
– With few gaps
– % identity should be >25% for proteins
• (>70% for DNA)
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BLAST makes suggestions,
You draw the conclusions!
• Look at E-value
• Look at graphic display
• If necessary, look at alignment
• Make your best guess!
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