title: NCBI BLAST: a better web interface.
abstract: Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) is a sequence similarity search program. The public interface of BLAST, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast, at the NCBI website has recently been reengineered to improve usability and performance. Key new features include simplified search forms, improved navigation, a list of recent BLAST results, saved search strategies and a documentation directory. Here, we describe the BLAST web application's new features, explain design decisions and outline plans for future improvement.
authors.affiliation: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Building 38A, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Irena
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Zaretskaya
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Raytselis
authors.forename: Yuri
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Merezhuk
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McGinnis
authors.forename: Thomas L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Madden
mesh_terms: D030541:Databases, Genetic; D020407:Internet; D009317:National Library of Medicine (U.S.); D016415:Sequence Alignment; D012984:Software; D014481:United States; D014584:User-Computer Interface