The Hitachi Software MiraiBio Group Blog

DNASIS MAX has the ability to search for homologous sequences to your sequence with Blast which is
useful in judging if the sequence is novel or even add annotations from known gene information. The following procedure guides you through utilizing Blast against an internal sequence database.

1. Launch DNASIS MAX and import the Tutorial1.fsa file which is located in the
C:\HSK_DB\TutorialData directory.

Fig1. After loading the tutorial data.

2. Click the DNA - Compare tab and select the Blast Search option.

Fig2. DNA - Compare tag.

3. The Analysis dialog will appear.

Fig3. Analysis Dialog - In the Analysis Dialog, you will find the Parameter and Execute buttons.
The Parameter button is for changing the parameters of an analysis.

4. Press the Parameter button and a dialog box will appear.

Fig4. BlastParameters dialog box.

5. Select the Blast program type from the Program name box.

• blastp - compares an amino acid query sequence against a protein sequence database
• blastn - compares a nucleotide query sequence against a nucleotide sequence database
• blastx - compares a nucleotide query sequence translated in all reading frames against a protein sequence database
• tblastn - compares a protein query sequence against a nucleotide sequence database dynamically translated in all reading frames
• tblastx - compares the six-frame translations of a nucleotide query sequence against the six-frame translations of a nucleotide sequence database.

6. Set the E-value or Expect value in the Expectation value field. This value represents the number of times you would expect to see such a match (or better) merely by chance. The closer the value is to zero, the less likely the event is. To re-iterate, the smaller the E-value, the more significant the match is and the lower number of hits you’ll see.  The default value is 10.

7. Select the intended database from the Nucleotide Database.
Select the In-house-NA for this tutorial.

8. Once the configurations have been set, press the OK button.
To discard any changes, press the Cancel button.

9. Press the Execute button to start the blast analysis.

Fig5. A sample result of the Blast search in DNASIS MAX.

For more information on DNASIS MAX, please visit the DNASIS MAX product page or download the FREE trial.