locBLAST v2.0 - an improved PHP library for embedding standalone NCBI BLAST+ program to an interactive graphical user interface

Background: NCBI BLAST is a most popularly used sequence analysis platform in a broad range of applications. The final release of standalone WWW BLAST server (wwwBLAST v2.2.26) of NCBI was officially released on May 10, 2004, and discontinued its support. Due to the popularity and high demand, the BLAST algorithms were refined with rich features and released as online BLAST, standalone BLAST+, BLAST RESTful service, and cloud BLAST server. locBLAST v2.0 is a lightweight PHP library, designed in preference to WWW BLAST server. It masks command-line BLAST+ programs to a rich graphical user interface (GUI). Methods: The locBLAST v2.0 library was designed using PHP, CSS, pure JavaScript, and standalone NCBI BLAST+ executables. Results: locBLAST v2.0 provides an interactive web interface to input query sequences through the web form and provides a graphical report of the sequence alignment result. The graphical overview, tabular summary, and formatted sequence alignment of locBLAST v2.0 result mimic to the native format of online NCBI BLAST result. It allows users to perform both local and online database search. Availability: Freely available at https://github.com/AshokHub/locBLAST