1. Support for the new FWR4 annotation feature in the AIRR format, both in standard format and in the AIRR alignment format.

    2. The previous “-penalty” parameter was renamed as -V_penalty to be consistent with other IgBLAST penalty options.

    3. Restored constant internal BLAST search parameters for domain annotation (i.e., FWR/CDR) such that this process is not influenced by user parameters.

    4. Corrected FWR/CDR annotations for certain mouse VK and rat VH germline genes. 

IgBLAST 1.15.0 is available for download from the BLAST FTP area. See the the new manual on GitHub for information about setting up and running IgBLAST.

 If you have any questions or concerns, please contact blast-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Check out the changes they made.

They added the cleanup-blastdb-volumes.py script to remove unused BLAST database volumes. Read the documentation here.

They also switched the protocol from ftp to https to access BLAST databases for increased performance and reliability when downloading data from the NCBI with the update_blastdb.pl script.

And fixed a few bugs related to downloading data from the NCBI, and mt_mode crashing blastn and blastx.

Check out the release notes.

Download BLAST+ 2.14.1

Questions or comments? Please write the BLAST help desk.

More info and download: https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/doc/blast-news/2023-BLAST-News.html

tax_id:
the unique identifier provided by NCBI Taxonomy
for the species or strain/isolate

GeneID:
the unique identifier for a gene
ASN1: geneid

Symbol:
the default symbol for the gene
ASN1: gene->locus

LocusTag:
the LocusTag value
ASN1: gene->locus-tag

Synonyms:
bar-delimited set of unofficial symbols for the gene

dbXrefs:
bar-delimited set of identifiers in other databases
for this gene. The unit of the set is database:value.
Note that HGNC and MGI include 'HGNC' and 'MGI', respectively,
in the value part of their identifier. Consequently,
dbXrefs for these databases will appear like:
HGNC:HGNC:1100
This would be interpreted as database='HGNC', value='HGNC:1100'
Example for MGI:
MGI:MGI:104537
This would be interpreted as database='MGI', value='MGI:104537'

chromosome:
the chromosome on which this gene is placed.
for mitochondrial genomes, the value 'MT' is used.

map location:
the map location for this gene

description:
a descriptive name for this gene

type of gene:
the type assigned to the gene according to the list of options
provided in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/IEB/ToolBox/CPP_DOC/lxr/source/src/objects/entrezgene/entrezgene.asn

Symbol from nomenclature authority:
when not '-', indicates that this symbol is from a
a nomenclature authority

Full name from nomenclature authority:
when not '-', indicates that this full name is from a
a nomenclature authority

Nomenclature status:
when not '-', indicates the status of the name from the
nomenclature authority (O for official, I for interim)

Other designations:
pipe-delimited set of some alternate descriptions that
have been assigned to a GeneID
'-' indicates none is being reported.

Modification date:
the last date a gene record was updated, in YYYYMMDD format

Feature type:
pipe-delimited set of annotated features and their classes or
controlled vocabularies, displayed as feature_type:feature_class
or feature_type:controlled_vocabulary, when appropriate; derived
from select feature annotations on RefSeq(s) associated with the
GeneID

Address of the bookmark: ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/gene/DATA/GENE_INFO/

ORFfinder is a graphical analysis tool for finding open reading frames (ORFs). We’ve been working on a few updates, and we’d like to find out what you think about them. Read on to find out what you can do with the new ORFfinder.

Smart BLAST (https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2015/07/29/smartblast/)

Select one or a group of ORFs and BLAST several databases at once, and use the newly developed SmartBLAST to verify protein names. Looking for the traditional results from BLAST? They’re there too.

• optimized to work with vast amount of data and very large file sets (~ 10,000 - 100,000).
• allows the selective retrieval of only the required files (file masks, ls-lR parsing, recursive search, updates)
• has a built-in repository containing the settings for the most common bioinformatics download needs
• built-in wizard for batch post-processing of downloaded files (archive extraction, file conversion, etc.)
• capable of performing multiple download or update tasks simultaneously

BioDownloader has a built-in repository containing the settings for common bioinformatics file-synchronization needs, including the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases. It can post-process downloaded files, including archive extraction and file conversions.

http://dunbrack.fccc.edu/BioDownloader/

Address of the bookmark: http://dunbrack.fccc.edu/BioDownloader/

Magic-BLAST incorporates within the NCBI BLAST code framework ideas developed in the NCBI Magic pipeline, in particular hit extensions by local walk and jump (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26109056), and recursive clipping of mismatches near the edges of the reads, which avoids accumulating artefactual mismatches near splice sites and is needed to distinguish short indels from substitutions near the edges.

Address of the bookmark: https://ncbi.github.io/magicblast/

Address of the bookmark: https://ncbi.github.io/magicblast/

What’s included in this release?

As of July 8, 2024, this full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data containing:

• 448,507,905 records
• 334,845,613 proteins
• 63,542,774 RNAs
• Sequences from 152,668 organisms

The release is provided in several directories as a complete dataset and also as divided by logical groupings.