How to Use BLAST for Finding and Aligning DNA or Protein Sequences

This video tutorial is an easy step-by-step guide for using the NCBI BLAST bioinformatics tool. We walk you through how to do a nucleotide or protein BLAST and give you tips for interpreting your BLAST results. We will also show you how to create an evolutionary tree from your BLAST results and demonstrate how to use BLAST for multiple sequence alignment. With the information provided in this tutorial, you should be ready to tackle your own bioinformatics and genomic research questions in no time! A list of projects that use BLAST is also available on the Science Buddies website. 

Topics

  • Genomics
  • nucleotide sequence
  • protein sequence
  • sequence alignment
  • multiple sequence alignment
  • global alignment
  • local alignment
  • BLAST
  • NCBI
  • sequence similarity
  • evolutionary distance tree
  • phylogenetic tree
  • sequence identity