MultiGeneBlast: Combined BLAST searches for operons and gene clusters

MultiGeneBlast is an open source tool for identification of homologs of multigene modules such as operons and gene clusters. It is based on a reformatting of the FASTA headers of NCBI GenBank protein entries, using which it can track down their source nucleotide and coordinates.

Oftentimes when studying such genetic loci, much can be learned from their evolutionary context. Furthermore, MultiGeneBlast can aid in the detection of such multigene parts for synthetic biology projects; a synthetic library of operons can be created based on its output to identify those operons whose function is closest to the one desired by the user.

This tool provides the opportunities to identify all homologous genomic regions by combining the results of single BlastP runs on each gene, and sorting genomic regions from any GenBank entry by the number of hits, synteny conservation and cumulative Blast bit score. The basic algorithm behind this was previously used in our antiSMASH software.
Additionally, architecture searches can be performed to find any genomic regions with Blast hits to any user-specified combination of amino acid sequences.

The tool comes with a pre-configured database containing the most recent version of all relevant GenBank divisions. Moreover, you can easily make your own databases from local files or online GenBank entries or divisions.

First full versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are now available from the download area.