Homonym: BLAST (Explosion)
BLAST stands for Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. It is a bioinformatics program used to compare biological sequences, such as DNA, RNA, or protein sequences, to find regions of similarity. By identifying these similarities, researchers can infer functional and evolutionary relationships between sequences.
The tool works by taking a query sequence and searching a database of sequences to find matches. BLAST uses algorithms to quickly identify high-scoring pairs of sequences, making it efficient for large datasets. This helps scientists in various fields, including genomics and molecular biology, to analyze genetic information and understand biological functions.