BLASTO

BLASTO performs BLAST-based searches against orthologous groups to prioritize functional and evolutionary relationships of query sequences.

Key Features:

• Orthologous Group Focus: Treats each orthologous group as a single unit, reducing redundancy and minimizing the influence of paralogs in sequence comparisons.
• Ranked Output: Produces a ranked list of orthologous groups based on their relevance to the query sequence to aid functional prediction and phylogenetic analysis.
• Significance Scoring: Aggregates individual BLAST hits within each orthologous group to compute significance scores, with optional weighting by the number of taxa in the group.
• Integration with Multispecies Databases: Incorporates orthology data from NCBI Clusters of Orthologous Groups, NCBI euKaryotic Orthologous Group database, OrthoMCL, MultiParanoid, and TIGR Eukaryotic Gene Orthologues database.

Scientific Applications:

• Genomics: Improves gene function prediction across species by analyzing orthologous groups rather than individual sequences.
• Evolutionary Biology: Supports inference of phylogenetic relationships and comparative evolutionary studies by ranking orthologous groups and accounting for taxonomic diversity.

Methodology:

Identifies orthologous groups relevant to a query sequence, performs BLAST searches within those groups, aggregates individual BLAST hits to compute significance scores optionally weighted by number of taxa, and outputs a ranked list of orthologous groups.