Sequence alignment is trying to match a DNA or amino acid sequence, even though the sequences might not be exactly the same, otherwise it would be a straight up string-search algorithm.
This is fundamental in bioinformatics for two reasons:
- when you sequence the DNA of a new species, you can guess what each protein does by comparing it with similar proteins in other species that you have already studied
- when doing DNA sequencing, and specially short-read DNA sequencing, you generally need to align the reads to reference genomes to know where you are inside the entire genome, and then be able to spot mutations, notably single-nucleotide polymorphisms
BLAST is a sequence alignment.
The NCBI free-to-use BLAST server: blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi. Having a centralized query server is fundamental, because the gain of sequence alignment really comes from having one huge database to link information together, which is best centralized.
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Sequence alignment is a bioinformatics method used to arrange sequences of DNA, RNA, or proteins to identify regions of similarity and difference. This process is crucial for understanding evolutionary relationships, functional similarities, and structural characteristics among biological sequences. There are two primary types of sequence alignment: 1. **Global Alignment**: This method aligns sequences from start to finish, ensuring that every residue in the sequences is aligned. It is typically used when comparing sequences that are of similar length and contain many conserved regions.