Basic Local Alignment Search Tool

Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) is an algorithm in bioinformatics which the purpose of searching a preprocessed database for homologues sequences for a new string.

History
Blast got developed by Altschul et al, who described it in their article Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, which they published 1990 in the journal of Moleculary Biology since bioinformatics wasn't fully developed separate subdiscipline at the time. As their paper got cited over 22000 times according to Google Scholar it is one of the most citied papers in biology.