Home page
The BLAST home page is always available from each page header's Home tab. Along the right side of the page are tips and news about BLAST. The top section of the page links to several organism-specific BLAST pages (which have not yet been incorporated into the redesign), in order of how often they are used as species limits in BLAST searches. Other species-specific BLAST pages are available from the ‘list all genomic databases’ link, which temporarily leads to the MapViewer home page. The MapViewer features a taxonomic directory that includes links to species- and group-specific BLAST pages, where they exist. Users have found this link to the MapViewer home page confusing, so a more usable solution is under development.
The middle section of the home page links to and describes the five general BLAST form types: Nucleotide BLAST, Protein BLAST, blastx, tblastn and tblastx. Nucleotide BLAST subsumes standard blastn, megablast and discontiguous megablast, presenting these three options as alternative algorithms for searching nucleotide databases with a nucleotide query. Similarly, Protein BLAST subsumes blastp, PSI-BLAST and PHI-BLAST.
The bottom section of the home page lists specialized BLAST types, such as searches for SNPs or gene expression profiles, and tools that use BLAST as an enabling technology, such as bl2seq (‘BLAST two sequences’), which uses BLAST for alignment but not for search.
BLAST form
All of the generic BLAST forms linked from the home page now share a common design. Only the options corresponding to the selected program type and algorithm appear on each form.
The
Enter Query Sequence section at the top of the form () provides a place to enter one or more query sequences, either by accession or gi number, or as IUPAC sequence in FASTA format. Supported IUPAC characters are documented in BLAST help at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/blastcgihelp.shtml. The optional
Query Subrange boxes limit the search to a subrange of the query sequence. As an alternative to cut/pasting sequence into a text box, you may also upload the query sequence(s) from a local disk file.
The new Job Title is the job name that appears in Saved Strategies and Recent Results, as well as at the top of every BLAST report. The title also appears in the title bar of the browser window or tab for the report, and as the default title of any bookmark to the report. The default title for a job is the query sequence definition line (in FASTA, the line beginning with ‘>’), but you may type over the default title to label the job in any way you like. When the input sequence is an accession or gi number, the BLAST web interface automatically looks up the definition line in GenBank without reloading the page. If multiple sequences are present, an appropriate descriptive title is generated (e.g. ‘5 nucleotide sequences’).
The Choose Search Set section of the BLAST form selects the BLAST database to be searched and applies limiting criteria, such as organism or Entrez query. Searches may be limited to a specific organism (species or taxonomic group) by typing the scientific name, common name or taxid (the integer id for the taxon in the NCBI Taxonomy database). As the user types the organism name, the Organism entry box prompts the user with a drop-down list of potential completions (.) At any time, the user may hit the down-arrow key to scroll through the list of choices, and/or hit the Return key to choose the selected taxon. The list is limited to 20 items, and is sorted in reverse order of how often each taxon appears in GenBank, placing more commonly studied organisms at the top of the list. This ‘autocomplete’ feature both helps users know what organism names are available, and prevents spelling and typing errors.
The limits and other values specified on each BLAST form remain in effect for the duration of the browser session, or until they are reset by the user. If the user signs in to My NCBI, they remain in effect across browser sessions.
The nucleotide BLAST form has additional search set options. The nucleotide Database section provides three common choices: Human genomic + transcript, Mouse genomic + transcript and Other. The genomic + transcript databases contain only NCBI reference sequences. They contain both genomic sequences and mRNAs for the organism, so both sequence types appear on the resulting report. Other contains the previously-available databases in a drop-down list. If the user selects a database from that list, Other is chosen automatically.
The genomic + transcript databases make it easier to search human and mouse sequences, and they automatically show transcript alignments to the genome. The human and mouse data sets use a new fast indexed search algorithm that decreases time-to-completion of a typical search by a factor of four (Morgulis,A. et al., manuscript in preparation). Searches for organisms other than human or mouse require simply selecting an alternate database, and an optional Organism limit. Within a browser session, each BLAST form automatically selects the database the user last chose, so an alternate database must be chosen only once.
The Program Selection section of the BLAST form selects the algorithm used for search and alignment. For nucleotide searches, the choices are megablast (default), discontiguous megablast and blastn. For protein searches, the options are blastp (default), PSI-BLAST and PHI-BLAST. The help link for this section leads to the BLAST program selection guide, which describes the algorithms and the criteria for choosing among them.
At this point in the form, most users will simply press the BLAST button to initiate a new search. BLAST previously opened results in a new window by default, which many users found annoying and disorienting. The new default behavior is for results to appear in the same window as the form (thereby replacing the form). The user may request results in a new window by checking the checkbox next to the BLAST button.
Detailed parameters for tuning the chosen program remain on the form, but they are now collapsed under a link entitled Algorithm Parameters, since only a tiny fraction of users ever use them. Clicking the link reveals the parameter controls. Of course, once the link is clicked, the parameters remain visible for the rest of the browser session. These parameters change depending upon the algorithm selected.
On the nucleotide form the available algorithms are
megablast,
discontiguous megablast and
blastn. Choosing
megablast selects a large word size (currently 28) and optimizes reward and penalty (1 and −2) for alignments of about 95% identity (
3).
Discontiguous megablast and
blastn have parameters more suitable for inter-species comparisons, with a smaller word size (11) and reward and penalty (2, −3) that optimize for alignments of about 85% identity (
3).
On the protein form the available choices are
blastp,
PSI-BLAST and
PHI-BLAST. Choosing
PSI-BLAST instead of
blastp displays more target sequences, and allows the user to select sequences to build the PSSM for the next PSI-BLAST iteration. Both of these cases use ‘conditional compositional score matrix adjustments’ (
4). PHI-BLAST does not support compositional adjustments, so the option disappears if PHI-BLAST is selected.
One new advanced feature has been added: BLAST now detects short input sequences for the nucleotide and protein search forms, and adjusts parameters to improve the chance of finding relevant matches. For short sequences (up to 30 residues for proteins, 50 bases for nucleotides), BLAST now automatically decreases word size (to seven for nucleotides, two for proteins), increases expect value (to 1000), and turns off low-complexity filtering. In addition, proteins use the PAM30 scoring matrix for short sequences as suggested by Altschul (
5). This feature can be turned off in the Algorithm Parameters section of the form.
Job running
The user submits a new BLAST job by pressing the BLAST form button. BLAST immediately presents the Job Running page, which reports some statistics about the job, and provides an estimate of completion time. The Job Running view periodically refreshes itself, effectively polling the server while the job runs. BLAST automatically displays the BLAST report when the job completes. A link to the Format Control page (described below) can be used to set formatting parameters as the job runs.
Format control
The Format Control page specifies formatting parameters for a specific BLAST job. It provides a few simplifications of and additions to the previous design. Alignments formatted as XML or ASN.1, and Bioseqs (ASN.1 only) now produce a file download, instead of encoded text displayed in the browser. Limit controls (i.e. the Descriptions, Graphical Overview and Alignments counts; the Organism and Entrez limits; and the expect value range) limit the items shown on the report for a completed job, rather than limiting the search set, as they do on the BLAST form. The Format Control form has a text input for the Request ID (RID), allowing the user to format the current job, or any other known RID. Clicking the View Report button displays the requested job's Report page or, for incomplete jobs, the Job Running page.
Report page
The current BLAST report pages are basically the same as the previous design, with a reformatted header and some new features. To the right of the breadcrumbs are three links:
- Reformat these results leads to the Format Control page,
- Edit and Resubmit leads to the original BLAST form, with the current parameters selected and
- Save Search Strategy saves the search parameters for the job so the user can run the same job again later with identical parameters. This option is available only if the user is signed in to My NCBI, since saved strategies are user-specific.
The Report Page [see Chapter 6 of (
6) or
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=handbook.chapter.ch16 for details) is divided into four sections:
- The Summary section provides links to alternate report formats: the taxonomy report (hits clustered taxonomically), the link to the MapViewer's ‘Genome View’ (hits shown on a genomic sequence map), and a new tree view (hits clustered by similarity).
- The Graphical Overview section presents a graphic of the regions of the result set that aligned to the query (called ‘high-scoring pairs’, or HSPs), plotted against the query sequence. The graphic is unchanged from the previous design.
- The Descriptions section is a table of the sequences that matched the query, sorted by increasing expect value. When the ‘Advanced view’ box is checked on the Format Control form, the Descriptions table can be resorted by clicking the header columns and more of each result sequence definition line is visible.
- The Alignments section presents the alignments of the HSPs, either as a series of pairwise alignments (default), or as a single block of all HSPs anchored to the query. These formats are described in previous web server issues (7,8). Web log analysis has shown that the links from subject sequences to other databases, particularly to Gene, are underutilized, so now each alignment contains an informative link to Gene, where such a link exists.
Recent Results
The Recent Results page displays a list of links to unexpired BLAST jobs for the current browser session. Each item in the list provides a link (via the RID) to the Format Control page for the corresponding job. Also displayed are the time and date the job was submitted and will expire, the job status (Running, Done or Error), the BLAST program name, the job title, the query sequence length, the BLAST database used and links to save the search strategy for the job (if signed in) or to remove the item from the list. Removing the item from the list does not remove the results from the server; the results can still be retrieved by RID. Currently, results are removed from the server only by expiration.
The Recent Results list is available even if the user is not signed in to My NCBI, but then the list is available only on one machine, and restarting the browser or clearing the browser cache clears the list. If the user signs in to My NCBI, the list becomes available on other machines and in other browsers, and will survive reboots, browser restarts and cache clears.
Recent Results also provides a text box that looks up any BLAST job by RID. BLAST RIDs are case-insensitive, alphanumeric strings that avoid certain letters that could be confused with digits. They have been shortened to 11 characters (previously 37) making them easier to type, format, print, jot down on paper or send in an email. BLAST RIDs contain a randomly generated part, making valid RIDs very difficult to guess.
Saved Strategies
Users who sign in to My NCBI can save the search strategy of a BLAST job for later use. Search strategies may be saved by clicking the “save” link on a Recent Results item, or by clicking the ‘Save Search Strategy’ link on a BLAST report. A saved search strategy comprises a title (by default, the title of the original job), the program name, and all program parameters used to run the job. The query sequence is also saved if either the query was entered as an accession or gi number, or if the total sequence length is <10 kb. Saved BLAST search strategies do not expire.
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