BLAST for beginners introduces students to blastn, a commonly used tool for comparing nucleotide sequences (DNA and RNA). This popular tutorial shows how to do a blast search with a nucleotide sequence, highlights information in the search results, and shows how to interpret the E value and alignment scores.
The complete set of materials consists of:
- The BLAST for beginners tutorial.
- A set of unknown sequences.
- A set of questions for students to answer.
- BLASTING through the kingdom of life (pdf document with answers for the example sequence and hints)
- BLASTING through the kingdom of life (Word document with just questions)
- Instructors may purchase an updated answer key from our TpT store.
- Learn about our new teachers guide: BLASTing through the Kingdom of Life Teachers Guide
Available as an interactive text with animations and videos in the iTunes Book store and as a PDF at our TpT store.
Funding for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation's Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement Program under grants DUE-0088153, DUE-0127599, from Bio-Link, an NSF Advanced Technology Education Center, and from the AC2 Bio-Link Regional Center.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
***We updated both the BLAST tutorial and the Blasting through the kingdom of life activity.
Additional reference material
Nucleotide - Definition and Examples. Biology Articles, Tutorials & Dictionary Online. https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/nucleotide