blast ☆

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Description:
Basic Local Alignment Search Tool

Type: Formula | Latest Version: 2.17.0@1 | Tracked Since: Dec 17, 2025

Links: Homepage | @NCBI | formulae.brew.sh

Category: Other

Tags: bioinformatics sequence-alignment genomics biology cli

Install: brew install blast

About:
BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) is a suite of programs used for sequence similarity searches against nucleotide and protein databases. It rapidly compares nucleotide or protein sequences to sequence databases and calculates the statistical significance of matches. This enables researchers to identify homologous sequences, infer functional and evolutionary relationships, and perform complex genomic analyses.

Key Features:

Multiple search algorithms (blastn, blastp, blastx, tblastn, tblastx)
High-speed sequence alignment using heuristics
Comprehensive statistical analysis of search results (E-values)
Support for both nucleotide and protein sequence databases
Command-line interface for batch processing and automation

Use Cases:

Identifying unknown gene or protein sequences by comparing against known databases
Finding homologous genes across different species for evolutionary studies
Verifying sequencing results and identifying contaminants
Functional annotation of newly sequenced genomes

Alternatives:

DIAMOND – Significantly faster protein similarity searches, but uses different algorithms and may be less sensitive for some queries
HMMER – Better for detecting remote homologs using profile hidden Markov models, but slower than BLAST for general searches

License: LicenseRef-Homebrew-public-domain

Dependencies: lmdb, mbedtls@3, pcre2

Bottles available for: arm64_tahoe, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, sonoma, arm64_linux, x86_64_linux

Version History

Detected	Version	Rev	Change	Commit
Sep 14, 2025 1:27am	2.17.0	0	VERSION_BUMP	f974f918