Description:

Sequence similarity searches can be done in multiple ways on multiple platforms. It is useful for comparing or discovering conserved regions across sometimes very dissimilar sequences. BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) aligns a sequence (nucleotide or peptide) to a database of other sequences or can align two sequences to each other. This workshop will cover the basics of sequence similarity searching with NCBI’s BLAST, and it will introduce specialized BLAST tools that can help you find statistically significant matches to a nucleotide or protein query sequence, discover homology across species, target your search to specific taxonomic groups in the BLAST database, and retrieve data for further analysis.

Prerequisites: There are no formal prerequisites for this workshop, but we recommend that attendees have an active account on Quest and are familiar with the basics of submitting jobs.

The Foundations in Genomics Analyses series will be taught in person on the Chicago campus and virtually during the fall 2024 quarter and will cover topics and skills foundational to conducting genomics-related research. This series is a collaboration between Northwestern IT's Research Computing and Data Services and the Galter Library and will be taught by Haley Carter and Pamela Shaw. Attendees are welcome to attend just one or as many workshops in the series they are interested in. However, there may be some references to previous weeks' material in any given workshop.