nodalpoint.org

If you ever wanted to use a nice software to analyse the large text result files produced by a Blast search system, you can try the BlastViewer software.

It's quite elegant (easy-to-use and very clear interface) and is capable of reading Blast results coming from the NCBI and the EBI Blast servers. Concerning the NCBI Blast server, BlastViewer is even capable of directly getting a result using the query RID.

And last but not least: it is a free software. Have a look at BlastViewer web site.

Cheers,
Charles

Cumulo Software has just released turnkey BLAST servers on EC2. The BLAST servers handle web service requests in a simple format. You can start as many servers as you need to achieve your desired throughput. It uses the latest BLAST+ software and databases. More information is located at http://www.cumulosoftware.com. Libraries and samples in many programming languages are also supplied.

Primer-BLAST combines primer design (using Primer3) and a specificity check with BLAST.

I was looking for the best way to explain what is blast to people with no background in biology/bioinformatics.

I thought I could to say it's a search engine:
- Blast is the same as google, but for biological sequences instead of search terms.

April 2, 2007: New BLAST design to be released on April 16, 2007
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The new NCBI BLAST pages will become the default interface at
http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast on April 16, 2007. The new
interface is currently available as a beta release at
http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/beta/. For details on the new
interface, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/beta/about/.

After the new interface is released, the previous interface will
remain available from a link on the new front page until May 14,
2007.

A Note About URLAPI

Compute Cluster: DSC00179 © Jordan Thevenow-Harrison / CC I few months ago I was trying to track down information about Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, pay-as-you-go virtual clustering service. At the time Declan Butler had emailed me asking about the feasibility of running bioinformatics applications on EC2. My investigation of EC2 for bioinformatics applications turned up very little at the time, today however Andrew Perry has posted an analysis on the feasibility of EC2 for running mpiBLAST. If you're into bioinformatics clusters (of course) then go read it right away, if you've considered a cluster and balked at the expense then this may be a solution.

The down side is, Amazon's limited-beta for EC2 is now full. Hey Amazon, Bioinformatics is a growing market, might pay to help Andrew out with some account space ?