StarBLAST is a scalable extension of SequenceServer BLAST, making BLAST accessible to educators and researchers running classroom-scale searches concurrently.
StarBLAST utilizes CCTOOLS for faster, distributed computing and CyVerse’s Visual Interactive Computing Environment (VICE). For a more in depth explaination and step-by-step tutorials of the whole StarBLAST collection, visit our documentation page.
SequenceServer is a front-end implementation of BLAST with improved GUI and customizable database input developed by the Wurmlab at Queen Mary University of London (Priyam et al., 2019). However, it is limited scaling and may be difficult to deploy for some people. StarBLAST extends SequenceServer for easier deployment and to scale for a larger number of simultaneous users (e.g., students).
- StarBLAST-VICE: Web Deployment for Small Classes (<25 students)
- StarBLAST-Docker: Cloud Deployment for Medium Classes (25-100 students)
- StarBLAST-HPC: HPC Deployment for Large Classes (>100 students)
- Official documentation: https://starblast.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- JOSS (Journal of Open Source Education) publication:
- Medium.com article
The StarBLAST team thanks the CCTools and SequenceServer teams for making StarBLAST possible. We also thank the Advanced Cyberifrastracture Concepts (ACIC) at University of Arizona for their contributions to the project (final project presentation from the class).