Ortholog Inference

Configure local BLAST searches and interpret OrthoEvolution outputs cautiously.

An ortholog search asks which genes in different species share an evolutionary origin. OrthoEvolution uses NCBI BLAST results to find candidates across the organisms in an accession table. It ranks sequence-similarity hits and records the selected accessions for the next analysis step.

Before you run the search

Before you run a local BLAST search, make sure that these inputs are ready:

• An accession table that defines the genes and organisms
• A reference species, which is normally human in the preconfigured workflow
• A compatible local BLAST database
• The BLASTDB environment variable if BLAST cannot find the database
• A project directory that the workflow can write to

Read the accession table before you start. Its gene labels, organism labels, and taxonomy identifiers determine how the workflow organizes each comparison.

Prepare the accession table

The accession file is a CSV table with one gene in each row. It requires the Tier, Gene, and organism columns. Use Tier for a group or priority that you define.

Tier	Gene	Homo_sapiens	Macaca_mulatta	Mus_musculus	Rattus_norvegicus
1	ADRA1A	NM_000680.3
2	ADRA1B	NM_000679.3

Put the query organism in the first organism column. Add one query accession for each gene. Organism names use underscores, such as Homo_sapiens. Empty cells in the other organism columns identify accessions that the workflow will search for.

Choose a query species with good annotation. Before you start, make sure that each query accession is correct. An incorrect query affects every comparison for that gene.

Choose a BLAST method

Method	Search	Database and filter	Appropriate use
1	Local	refseq_rna_v5 with taxonomy IDs	Multi-gene, multi-species ortholog searches
2	Remote	NCBI refseq_rna with an Entrez query	Searches that must run through NCBI
None	Local	refseq_rna without taxonomy IDs	A simple query, not the normal ortholog workflow

Method 1 is the recommended configuration for an ortholog search. It requires a local version 5 BLAST database. Method 2 uses an NCBI service and cannot filter with taxonomy IDs. The method controls how BLAST runs. It does not change the biological evidence required to identify an ortholog.

Preconfigured workflow

from OrthoEvol.Orthologs.Blast import OrthoBlastN

ortholog_search = OrthoBlastN(
    project="orthology-gpcr",
    method=1,
    save_data=True,
    acc_file="gpcr.csv",
    copy_from_package=True,
)
ortholog_search.run()

This code sets up and starts the workflow. It does not install BLAST or download a database. Before you run a large analysis, make sure that BLAST can find the selected database.

If acc_file points to your own accession table, set copy_from_package=False. Use the packaged-copy option only for tables that come with OrthoEvolution.

Review the search results

After the search finishes, review these output files:

• Per-gene BLAST XML results
• A master accession file
• A table of BLAST execution times
• Post-BLAST summaries when save_data=True

The selected accessions are candidate orthologs that the computation ranks. Sequence similarity alone does not show conserved function, regulatory equivalence, or an experimentally tested evolutionary relationship. Before you interpret the biology, review all ambiguous, duplicate, and missing hits.

When BLAST does not finish

If BLASTDB is absent, the workflow stops early. It can stop later if BLAST is missing, a database is unavailable, or the accession table is malformed. An accession that BLAST cannot extract can also stop part of the search. Keep the log and master accession files so that you can trace a partial run.