lastz ☆

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Description:
Pairwise aligner for DNA sequences

Type: Formula | Tracked Since: Dec 28, 2025

Links: Homepage | formulae.brew.sh

Category: Other

Tags: bioinformatics genomics alignment dna sequence-analysis

Install: brew install lastz

About:
LASTZ is a highly efficient pairwise aligner designed for aligning large DNA sequences, such as vertebrate genomes. It excels at finding homologous regions between species while maintaining sensitivity. The tool is optimized for speed and memory usage, making it suitable for whole-genome comparisons.

Key Features:

Optimized for large-scale genome alignments
Supports both nucleotide and translated searches
Highly configurable scoring schemes
Fast and memory-efficient algorithm

Use Cases:

Comparative genomics and identifying conserved regions
Aligning sequencing reads to a reference genome
Detecting homology between different species

Alternatives:

BLAST – BLAST is a general-purpose sequence search tool, whereas LASTZ is specifically optimized for pairwise genome-scale DNA alignment.
BWA – BWA is primarily designed for short-read mapping to a reference genome, while LASTZ is better suited for aligning longer, more divergent sequences.

Version History

Detected	Version	Rev	Change	Commit
Sep 15, 2025 3:05pm		0	VERSION_BUMP	5c144c98
Sep 14, 2024 1:05pm		0	VERSION_BUMP	b00f43bd