Question

FASTA and BLAST are __________ but __________ for larger datasets.

(a) faster, more sensitive

(b) faster, less sensitive

(c) slower, less sensitive

(d) slower, more sensitive

This question was addressed to me by my college director while I was bunking the class.

My question is based upon Database Searching with the Smith topic in division Database Similarity Searching of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Correct option is (b) faster, less sensitive

Easy explanation: Empirical tests have indeed shown that the exhaustive method produces superior results over the heuristic methods like BLAST and FASTA. But heuristic methods are better and practical when it comes to assess larger datasets with comparatively low sensitivity.