A distributed system for DNA/protein database similarity searches

A distributed system for exhaustive alignment similarity searches on DNA/protein databases is presented. The system makes it possible to share the computational burden on diverse computers, provided they are interconnected by a network supporting TCP/IP communication. It consists of three separate programs: a user-interface module, a similarity score calculation module (multiple instances of which may be running simultaneously on different machines), and a control module. This last acts as the 'hub' of the system. The three programs have been successfully tested under the AIX, SunOS, VAX/VMS and MS/DOS operating systems.