Searching for homology
Most research projects involving sequencing of either DNA or protein have a requirement for obtaining biological information of the newly sequenced and maybe unknown sequence. If the researchers have no prior information of the sequence and biological content, valuable information can often be obtained using BLAST. The BLAST algorithm will search for homologous sequences in predefined and annotated databases of the users choice.
In an easy and fast way the researcher can gain knowledge of gene or protein function and find evolutionary relations between the newly sequenced DNA and well established data.
A BLAST search generates a report specifying the potentially homologous sequences found and their local alignments with the query sequence.