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Is It Possible To Use Blast+ To Hit Embl Database?

I am having nightmare in using NCBI-BLAST+ for last two weeks. Now blasting remote database became very slow irrespective of my computer or my internet connectivity speed. I am thinking to use EMBL-EST database instead of NCBI-EST database as an alternative. Is it possible to hit EMBL-EST database using BLAST+ tool? Specifying organism specific database like est_others will really increase the speed?
Many thanks!

blast+
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updated by Torst Torst • written by second_exon second_exon

1 answer

It is possible you have been throttled by ENA for using the web service too much.

NCBI have explicit guidelines on this:

http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Web&PAGE_TYPE=BlastDocs&DOC_TYPE=DeveloperInfo

Do not overload the NCBI servers. If you are intending to perform more than 20 searches in a session you should comply with the following guidelines:

  1. Do not contact the server more often than once every three seconds.
  2. Do not poll for any single RID more often than once a minute.
  3. Use the URL parameter email, and tool, so that we can track your project and contact you if there is a problem.
  4. Run scripts weekends or between 9 pm and 5 am Eastern Time weekday if more than 50 searches will be submitted.

You should just download the BLAST+ binaries and the preformatted EST databases and run the searches locally?

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updated by Ram Ram • written by Torst Torst

I already tried these, but I still get the same problem :(.

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written by CuteDriving663 • CuteDriving663

Downloading and using pre-formatted database is an useful alternative :)

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written by second_exon second_exon

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