Tools:

EU name: TOOLS

(From: ../EUDIR ) (Date: Jan 27 17:59 ../EUDI)

After completing the "Tools" section you will be able to use the following bioinformatics tools:
MRS, to retrieve sequences, structures and other biomolecular data.
BLAST, with which you search the database with a query sequence to find homologous database sequences.
CLUSTAL, with which you can make sequence alignments. These alignments can be used to carry over information.
Yasara, with which you can view and manipulate biomolecular structures.

There is no way to do bioinformatics without software. We will try to reduce the number of programs you need to learn operating to a minimum, but we cannot do without at least four important tools:

Figure 24. MRS is a search engine for biomedical databases. It is a kind of BioGoogle.

Figure 25. BLAST can search in databases for sequences that 'look like' your sequence of interest. (And defining 'looks like' is one of the topics of this course).

Figure 26. CLUSTAL can make alignments, i.e., it can tell you which residues are at equivalent positions that will allow transfer of information from one sequence to another. MRS also makes sequence alignments and is for this course normally (more than) good enough.

Figure 27.