FASTA Searching

FASTA searching is a bioinformatics tool used to compare a protein or nucleic acid query sequence to sequence databases. It is commonly used to search for small sequence similarities between sequences of interest and available sequences in large databases. FASTA search algorithms compute a score that indicates the level of similarity between the query sequence and the sequences in the database, and then report all sequences in the database that exceed a preset threshold. This comparison is useful for molecular evolution, protein structure, and molecular diagnosis. FASTA searching is a key part of most bioinformatics research, helping researchers to identify and compare previously unknown proteins or nucleic acids, and to identify potential therapeutic targets.