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Sequence Similarity Searching

Keith Robisons's Biocomputing Hypertext Book
Keith Robison, Harvard Institute of Human Genetics
Boston, MA
A quick introduction to BLAST and FASTA, and some common pitfalls, with many links to references and supporting documentation.
http://arep.med.harvard.edu/seqanal/

The Statistics of Sequence Similarity Scores
Stephen Altschul, NCBI/Cold Spring Harbor
A very clear explanation of how BLAST generates those "e-values", has some math, but not intimidating.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/tutorial/Altschul-1.html

BLAST OFF: Interpreting BLAST Results (tutorial)
Stanford Human Genome Center
Human Genome Education Program
http://www-shgc.stanford.edu/bio-ed/BlastSearch.html

Exploring Distant Protein Sequence Relationships
William R. Pearson, Univ. of Virgina
A good theoretical discussion of using similarity searching programs (FASTA) to study evolutionary relationships. Slides from a talk - missing some of the explanations that would be given in a live talk.
http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/Lectures/prot_talk12-95.html

Database Similarity Searching Using BLAST and FastA
Bruno A. Ga‘ta, Australian National Genomic Information Service,
The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
http://ba-itumac1.lib.unimelb.edu.au/ABA/zBLAST_Fasta/BLAST_FastA.html