2022 BLAST NEWS

Thu, 17 March 2022

BLAST+ 2.13.0 is here!

Starting with this release, we are including the blastn_vdb and tblastn_vdb executables in the BLAST+ distribution.

These executables can directly search SRA and WGS projects without the need to build a BLAST database. See https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/WGS_TOOLS/README_BLASTWGS.txt for information on using these executables with WGS projects.

We have also produced ARM LINUX executables and placed them on the FTP site (ncbi-blast-2.13.0+-x64-arm-linux.tar.gz). These executables have passed our normal QA, but this is our first release for this architecture. Please let us know if you find any issues.

Usage reporting - Help improve BLAST by sharing limited information about your search. Details on the information collected, how it is used, how to opt-out, and our privacy statement is found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK563686/

New features

Improvements

  • TBLASTN can now handle database sequences up to 2 billion bases (was 1 billion)

  • Makeblastdb default volume size is now 3 billion bases (was 1 billion)

  • Dustmasker has a new option to replace low complexity regions with N’s (hard masking)

  • Makeblastdb will issue an error message and exit if it encounters a sequence longer than the maximum supported size (2,147,483,647 letters).

Bug fixes

  • Rare problem with mutex that caused BLAST to crash.

  • Memory leaks

See the release notes for more details at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK131777/

The new executables are at https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/executables/blast+/LATEST

Mon, 07 Feb 2022

ElasticBLAST is here!

ElasticBLAST is a new cloud based tool to run your BLAST searches faster and make you more effective.

ElasticBLAST is ideal for users who have a large number (thousands to millions) of queries to BLAST or who prefer to use cloud infrastructure for their searches. It makes running BLAST on the cloud fast and easy and can run on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

To get started with ElasticBLAST, go to ElasticBLAST documentation

We’ll also have a webinar on ElasticBLAST on February 16. Register at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6641488258216124684?source=BLASTNews

Other resources: