BLAST: a more efficient report with usability improvements.

The Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) website at the National Center for Biotechnology (NCBI) is an important resource for searching and aligning sequences. A new BLAST report allows faster loading of alignments, adds navigation aids, allows easy downloading of subject sequences and reports and has improved usability. Here, we describe these improvements to the BLAST report, discuss design decisions, describe other improvements to the search page and database documentation and outline plans for future development.

Primer-BLAST: a tool to design target-specific primers for polymerase chain reaction.

Background: Choosing appropriate primers is probably the single most important factor affecting the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Specific amplification of the intended target requires that primers do not have matches to other targets in certain orientations and within certain distances that allow undesired amplification. The process of designing specific primers typically involves two stages.

Elevated cerebral pressure passivity is associated with prematurity-related intracranial hemorrhage.

Objectives: Cerebral pressure passivity is common in sick premature infants and may predispose to germinal matrix/intraventricular hemorrhage (GM/IVH), a lesion with potentially serious consequences. We studied the association between the magnitude of cerebral pressure passivity and GM/IVH.

Patients And Methods: We enrolled infants <32 weeks' gestational age with indwelling mean arterial pressure (MAP) monitoring and excluded infants with known congenital syndromes or antenatal brain injury.

NCBI BLAST: a better web interface.

Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) is a sequence similarity search program. The public interface of BLAST, http://www.ncbi.