BEAUTY - AN ENHANCED BLAST-BASED SEARCH TOOL THAT INTEGRATES MULTIPLEBIOLOGICAL INFORMATION RESOURCES INTO SEQUENCE SIMILARITY SEARCH RESULTS

BEAUTY (BLAST enhanced alignment utility) is an enhanced version of th e NCBI's BLAST data base search tool that facilitates identification o f the functions of matched sequences. We have created new data bases o f conserved regions and functional domains For protein sequences in NC BI's Entrez data base, and BEAUTY allows this information to be incorp orated directly into BLAST search results. A Conserved Regions Data Ba se, containing the locations of conserved regions within Entrez protei n sequences, was constructed by (1) clustering the entire data base in to families, (2) aligning each family using OUT. PIMA multiple alignme nt program, and (3) scanning the multiple alignments to locate the con served regions within each aligned sequence. A separate Annotated Doma ins Data Base was constructed by extracting the locations of all annot ated domains and sites from sequences represented in the Entrez PROSIT E, BLOCKS, and PRINTS data bases. BEAUTY performs a BLAST search of th ose Entrez sequences with conserved regions and/or annotated domains. BEAUTY then uses the information from the Conserved Regions and Annota ted Domains data bases to generate, for each matched sequence, a schem atic display that allows one to directly compare the relative location s of (1) the conserved regions, (2) annotated domains and sites, and ( 3) the locally aligned regions matched in the BLAST search. In additio n, BEAUTY search results include World-Wide Web hypertext links to a n umber of external data bases that provide a variety of additional type s of information on the function of matched sequences. This convenient integration of protein families, conserved regions, annotated domains , alignment displays, and World-Wide Web resources greatly enhances th e biological informativeness of sequence similarity searches. BEAUTY s earches can be performed remotely on our system using the ''BCM Search Launcher'' World-Wide Web pages (URL is .bcm.tmc.edu:8088/search-laun cher/launcher.html]).