How to: Run BLAST software on a local computer
Starting with...
LOCAL DATABASES
- Go to the BLAST download page.
- Click the download link under "archive" for your operating system.
- The Windows archives are self-extracting executables. Additional archive formats are available from the BLAST executables ftp site.
- To install the software, follow the instructions in the BLAST+ user manual, or for help, write to blast-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
- Use the BLAST+ makeblastdb program (or formatdb in the legacy BLAST package) to convert a FASTA-formatted local file into a BLAST database.
- Pre-formatted BLAST databases are available from the BLAST database ftp site. Consult the README file in that directory for more information.
DATABASES ON NCBI SERVERS
- One of the BLAST+ command line options is “-remote”, which sends the search to NCBI BLAST servers, avoiding the need to install and maintain local databases.
- The "-remote" function in BLAST+ is the recommended replacement for Netblast (blastcl3) in legacy BLAST.