An input format characterized by a header line beginning with the "greater than" symbol (>) This format is automatically detected and accepted in a sequence query
Program used to search simultaneously both protein and DNA sequence databases (Pearson and Lipman, 1988) FASTA uses a fast search to initially identify sequences with a high degree of similarity to the query sequence and then conducts a second comparison on the selected sequences FASTA is slower than BLAST, but is more sensitive/sometimes yields different results
A database search tool used to compare a nucleotide or peptide sequence to a sequence database The program is based on the rapid sequence algorithm described by Lipman and Pearson
A computer program based on the method of W Pearson and D Lipman [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 85, 2444-2448 (1988)] to search for similarities between one sequence (the query) and any group of sequences (the database)
The first widely used algorithm for database similarity searching The program looks for optimal local alignments by scanning the sequence for small matches called "words" Initially, the scores of segments in which there are multiple word hits are calculated ("init1") Later the scores of several segments may be summed to generate an "initn" score An optimized alignment that includes gaps is shown in the output as "opt" The sensitivity and speed of the search are inversely related and controlled by the "k-tup" variable which specifies the size of a "word" (Pearson and Lipman)