Biology / Unit 7 Bio 1581 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Sequence Alignment and BLAST
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The idea
Sequence alignment arranges DNA, RNA, or protein sequences to identify shared regions; BLAST is software that searches a database for sequences matching a query.
In practice
Entering one short DNA sequence into BLAST returns every location in a chosen genome with a closely matching sequence.
Where people slip
A BLAST match shows sequence similarity at the searched region — it does not establish identical function.
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