Lesson plan
Formatdb
formatdb is a discontinued software tool that was used in molecular bioinformatics to format protein or nucleotide databases for BLAST. It has been replaced by makeblastdb and the NCBI "strongly encourage[s]" users to stop using formatdb. formatdb must be used in order to format protein or nucleotide source databases before these databases can be searched by BLAST. The source database may be in either FASTA or ASN.1 format. Although the FASTA format is most often used as input to formatdb, the use of ASN.1 is advantageous for those who are using ASN.1 as the common source for other formats such as the GenBank report. The opposite of operation of formatdb, extracting sequences from a blast formatted database, can be achieved by using the fastacmd program, which comes in the same package. In the BLAST+ version, formatdb has been succeeded by makeblastdb.
Article summary
formatdb is a discontinued software tool that was used in molecular bioinformatics to format protein or nucleotide databases for BLAST. It has been replaced by makeblastdb and the NCBI "strongly encourage[s]" users to stop using formatdb. formatdb must be used in order to format protein or nucleotide source databases before these databases can be searched by BLAST. The source database may be in either FASTA or ASN.1 format. Although the FASTA format is most often used as input to formatdb, the use of ASN.1 is advantageous for those who are using ASN.1 as the common source for other formats such as the GenBank report. The opposite of operation of formatdb, extracting sequences from a blast formatted database, can be achieved by using the fastacmd program, which comes in the same package. In the BLAST+ version, formatdb has been succeeded by makeblastdb.
Key claims
No claims recorded.
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.