When given an unknown
sequence, one should be able to find the name of the gene and possible origin
to which the sequence belongs. Computational biologists find this application
to be very useful because they can compare their sequence to the sequences that
already exist in one of the three database centers. A biologist is able to
determine the name of the gene to which their sequence possibly belongs if
there is enough similarity between their sequence and some sequence in the databases.
This can be done with only part of the nucleotide sequence and a full sequence
is not required. WU-BLAST (Washington University BLAST) is based on sequence
aligning and once the program has found possible matches, it will list all the
organisms’ sequences that are the most similar with your sequence being
queried. The program orders the closest in relation at the top and the furthest
match at the bottom; the higher the score, the more likely the match.
For more
information about WU-Blast, go to Washingtion University’s BLAST archives at:
Instructions:
1. Click on the box
under program and select the WU-blastn option for nucleotide
sequence identification.
2. Select and copy (or type) your nucleotide sequence (or
Accession or GI identification numbers) from the FASTA format to empty box.
Select: Highlight your nucleotide sequence by clicking on the left mouse button, holding the button down while dragging the cursor over the region to be highlighted, then release mouse button.
Copy: Use command from the Edit box of the Explorer window or by pressing CTRL + C on the keyboard.
Paste: No specific format required. Use the Paste command from the Edit box of the Explorer window or press CTRL + V on the keyboard.
3. Click on the “RUN
BLAST” button to start the program.
4. Program will list all
the sequences of the organisms closely related to your sequence.
The most similar will be at the top of the list and the less similar sequences will follow.
If you need more
assistance, click on the “Help” hyperlink in the WU-Blast program.
When you
are ready, click here to start.
WU-Blast2 at
the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)