Recent Hits Acquired by BLAST (ReHAB): a tool to identify new hits in sequence similarity searches.
BACKGROUND
Sequence similarity searching is a powerful tool to help develop hypotheses in the quest to assign functional, structural and evolutionary information to DNA and protein sequences. As sequence databases continue to grow exponentially, it becomes increasingly important to repeat searches at frequent intervals, and similarity searches retrieve larger and larger sets of results. New and potentially significant results may be buried in a long list of previously obtained sequence hits from past searches.


RESULTS
ReHAB (Recent Hits Acquired from BLAST) is a tool for finding new protein hits in repeated PSI-BLAST searches. ReHAB compares results from PSI-BLAST searches performed with two versions of a protein sequence database and highlights hits that are present only in the updated database. Results are presented in an easily comprehended table, or in a BLAST-like report, using colors to highlight the new hits. ReHAB is designed to handle large numbers of query sequences, such as whole genomes or sets of genomes. Advanced computer skills are not needed to use ReHAB; the graphics interface is simple to use and was designed with the bench biologist in mind.


CONCLUSIONS
This software greatly simplifies the problem of evaluating the output of large numbers of protein database searches.
Whitney
Joe
J
Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P6, Canada. jwhitney@gmail.com
Esteban
David J
DJ
Upton
Chris
C
D000465:Algorithms; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003201:Computers; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D016208:Databases, Factual; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D030562:Databases, Protein; D016678:Genome; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface
D004247:DNA