In the field of bioinformatics, a sequence database is a large collection of DNA, protein, or other sequences stored on a computer. A database can include sequences from only one organism, as in databases including all the proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or it can include sequences from all organisms whose DNA has been sequenced.
Sequence databases can be searched using a variety of methods. The most common is probably searching for a sequence similar to a certain target protein or gene whose sequence is already known to the user. The BLAST program is a method of this type.
