📖 Help & Documentation

Everything you need to get the most out of InsectDB's search tools.

⚡ Quick start: Paste a FASTA-formatted sequence into the Search page, leave all settings at their defaults, and click Search Database. You'll have results in seconds.
🔍 Performing a Search ▾
  1. 1
    Enter a Query

    Paste one or more FASTA-formatted sequences into the text box, or switch to the Upload FASTA tab to upload a file directly. Multiple sequences are supported — simply include each with its own >header line.

  2. 2
    Select Sequence Types

    Specify whether your query and the target database are Protein or Nucleotide. The tool automatically selects the correct BLAST program based on this combination — see the table below for details.

    Query Type Database Type Program Used
    ProteinProteinblastp
    NucleotideNucleotideblastn
    ProteinNucleotidetblastn
    NucleotideProteinblastx
  3. 3
    Target Organism (optional)

    Use the Target Organism dropdown to restrict your search to a specific insect species. Leave it on All Organisms to search the entire database.

  4. 4
    Set Filters (optional)

    Three optional filters let you narrow results: Max. E-value sets a significance threshold (lower = more stringent), Min. Identity (%) filters by sequence similarity, and Min. Score removes low-scoring hits.

📊 Interpreting the Results ▾
  • 📈
    Identity Bar

    The visual bar in the Identity column gives an at-a-glance view of how closely a hit matches your query. Longer and greener means higher percent identity.

  • 🔗
    Accession Links

    Each accession number links directly to its entry on NCBI, where you can view full annotations, taxonomy, and related records.

  • 🧩
    Alignment View

    Click Show on any hit row to expand the pairwise sequence alignment. The alignment displays the Query, match midline, and Subject (Sbjct) sequences with their positional coordinates.

  • 🏷️
    Domain Search

    For protein hits, click Find → in the Domains column to launch an NCBI CD-Search for conserved protein domains. Results open in a new tab.

  • 🕸️
    PPI Network

    After a protein search, click PPI Network to send all hit accessions to the STRING database and visualise protein-protein interaction networks in a new tab.

⬇ Exporting & Downloading ▾
  • 📄
    CSV / TSV Export

    Once results appear, use the ⬇ CSV or ⬇ TSV buttons in the results header to download all hits (across all pages) as a delimited text file. Fields include Query ID, Accession, Description, Score, E-value, and Percent Identity.

  • 🧬
    Full Dataset Downloads

    To download the entire curated protein or nucleotide FASTA database for local analysis, visit the Downloads page.

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Apply what you've learned and explore the database.
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