Key Features of BLAST:
1. Sequence Comparison: BLAST searches for local alignments between the query sequence and sequences in a database. It identifies regions of similarity, which can help infer functional and evolutionary relationships.

2. Speed and Efficiency: BLAST uses heuristic algorithms, making it faster than exhaustive search methods, suitable for large-scale database searches.

3. Versatility: There are several versions of BLAST for different types of sequence comparisons:
- blastn: Compares a nucleotide query sequence against a nucleotide sequence database.
- blastp: Compares a protein query sequence against a protein sequence database.
- blastx: Compares a nucleotide query sequence translated in all reading frames against a protein sequence database.
- tblastn: Compares a protein query sequence against a nucleotide sequence database translated in all reading frames.
- tblastx: Compares the six-frame translations of a nucleotide query sequence against the six-frame translations of a nucleotide sequence database.

4. Scoring and E-value: BLAST results are scored based on the quality and length of the alignments. The E-value (expect value) indicates the number of alignments one can expect to find by chance, with lower E-values representing more significant matches.

5. Output Formats: BLAST provides results in various formats, including plain text, HTML, XML, and JSON, making it adaptable for different types of analyses and integrations with other tools.

Applications of BLAST:
- Genomic Research: Identifying genes, understanding genetic diversity, and mapping genome sequences.
- Protein Function Prediction: Inferring the function of unknown proteins by comparing them to known protein sequences.
- Evolutionary Studies: Exploring evolutionary relationships between organisms by comparing their genetic material.
- Medical Research: Identifying pathogens, understanding disease mechanisms, and developing treatments by comparing sequences of interest.

Overall, BLAST is an essential tool in bioinformatics, offering a reliable and efficient way to analyze and interpret biological sequence data.

To cite Mugsy, use:

Angiuoli SV and Salzberg SL. Mugsy: Fast multiple alignment of closely related whole genomes.Bioinformatics 2011 27(3):334-4

Address of the bookmark: http://mugsy.sourceforge.net/

https://academic.oup.com/nar/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nar/gkae679/7730539?login=true

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/Zhenlisme/heliano/

LoVis4u is a bioinformatics tool for Loci Visualisation.

LoVis4u, a command-line tool and Python API designed for highly customizable and fast visualisation of multiple genomic loci. LoVis4u generates vector images in PDF format based on annotation data from GenBank or GFF files. It is capable of visualising entire genomes of bacteriophages as well as plasmids and user-defined regions of longer prokaryotic genomes. Additionally, LoVis4u offers optional data processing steps to identify and highlight accessory and core genes in input sequences.

https://art-egorov.github.io/lovis4u/

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/art-egorov/lovis4u

Main features of YASS are:

• multiple, possibly overlapping seeds and a new hit criterion to ensure a good sensitivity/selectivity trade-off
• transition-constrained spaced seeds to improve sensitivity (transition mutations are purine to purine [A<->G] or pyrimidine to pyrimidine [C<->T])
• using different scoring schemes with bit-score and E-value evaluated according to the sequence background frequencies
• parameterizable output filter for low complexity repeats
• reporting of various alignment statistical parameters (mutation bias along triplets, transition/transversion)
• post-processing step to group gapped alignments

Address of the bookmark: http://bioinfo.lifl.fr/yass/

FSA brings the high accuracies previously available only for small-scale analyses of proteins or RNAs to large-scale problems such as aligning thousands of sequences or megabase-long sequences. FSA introduces several novel methods for constructing better alignments:

• FSA uses machine-learning techniques to estimate gap and substitution parameters on the fly for each set of input sequences. This "query-specific learning" alignment method makes FSA very robust: it can produce superior alignments of sets of homologous sequences which are subject to very different evolutionary constraints.
• FSA is capable of aligning hundreds or even thousands of sequences using a randomized inference algorithm to reduce the computational cost of multiple alignment. This randomized inference can be over ten times faster than a direct approach with little loss of accuracy.
• FSA can quickly align very long sequences using the "anchor annealing" technique for resolving anchors and projecting them with transitive anchoring. It then stitches together the alignment between the anchors using the methods described above.
• The included GUI, MAD (Multiple Alignment Display), can display the intermediate alignments produced by FSA, where each character is colored according to the probability that it is correctly aligned (see the picture and movie at the top of the page).

You can see more information on the FAQ. 

Address of the bookmark: http://fsa.sourceforge.net/

The program is written in Java in order to provide a graphical user interface that is portable across a variety of computer platforms; indeed its name stands for "Local Alignments with Java". Currently it exists in two forms, a stand-alone application and a web-based applet, with slightly different capabilities.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.bx.psu.edu/~ratan/

The most used mappers of DNA-seq data are BWA and Bowtie for DNA-Seq data and Tophat, STAR or HISAT for RNA-Seq data. Mappers differ in which options they can take in, how fast and how accurate they are. Bowtie is faster than BWA, but looses some sensitivity (does not map an equal amount of reads to the correct position in the genome).

Address of the bookmark: http://wiki.bits.vib.be/index.php/Mapping_of_NGS_data

Address of the bookmark: http://www.isical.ac.in/~bioinfo_miu/FOGSAA.htm