CLC bio, in collaboration with Korilog, has released the Klast plug-in for CLC Genomics Workbench and CLC Main Workbench to accelerate the analysis of data from next-generation sequencing (NGS).
Klast is a new sequence similarity search tool which builds on a highly optimised implementation of the Plast algorithm published in BMC Bioinformatics. Klast is comparable to the current standard Blast providing a similar accuracy, but can perform up to 25 times faster (with comparable search parameters and multicore threaded configuration). Another important Klast benefit is that its algorithm is designed to compare two large sets of sequence databanks in a single run.
Mikael Flensborg, director of global partner relations for CLC bio, stated: ‘This solution will allow users to significantly accelerate their research by providing them with this fast, accurate, and NGS-scalable sequence similarity search software that integrates with our CLC Genomics Workbench, and offers a user-friendly graphical interface.’
The logic of Klast is different from Blast, and can provide significant accelerations of seed-based heuristic comparison methods using multi-threading and SSE instructions that make the tool high-performing and more scalable than Blast on multiple cores.
