[Bioclusters] Nightly updated BLAST databases

[Jeremy Mann]

I am implementing a nightly updated and formatdb script for the BLAST
unformatted databases from NCBI. A researcher today asked a question that
I could not answer. His question was, if he runs a long BLAST search
during the time my script is running, what will happen to his returned
search? Will he get false positive from both databases (the old one and
the newly created one)? Will the database be locked out during his search
and my script will fail?

I was amazed that I didn't think of this sooner. What does everybody here
use as a script and how do you prevent the database from being newly
formatted if a current BLAST search is running?

Thanks for any answers.



-- 
Jeremy Mann
jeremy@biochem.uthscsa.edu

University of Texas Health Science Center
Bioinformatics Core Facility
Phone: (210) 567-2672