BLAST+ — Command-Line Sequence Search

Run local NCBI BLAST+ 2.17.0 searches end-to-end: build a database with makeblastdb, search it with blastn / blastp / blastx / tblastn, emit machine-parseable tabular output, and scope by taxonomy. For very large protein searches, hand off to DIAMOND blastp --ultra-sensitive (100x–10,000x the speed of BLAST, per the DIAMOND project). This is the CLI / local-database skill; it is deliberately distinct from the Biopython web API and the gget one-liner (see routing table below).

Bulk DB builds and large searches are CPU/IO-heavy and fully offline — good candidates to run on local compute rather than burning API calls.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when the request involves any of: