Difference between KEGG BlastKOALA and Annotate Sequence

Question

[qiyunzhu]

Dear community,

I'm trying to annotate a few new proteomes with putative functions. I tried KEGG. There are "BlastKOALA" and "Annotate Sequence" both listed in their portal, and the two tools produce results in the same format. I noticed that the first-glance differences are that 1) BlastKOALA is much slower, and requires Email verification, 2) BlastKOALA lets you define an NCBI Taxonomy ID, and designate a database, while Annotate Sequence only lets you type genus name.

Given that, I am curious what are their actual differences, and which one should I use, or are there any other recommended options?

Thanks and have a great new week.

Best,

[Pavel Senin]

I would guess that "Annotate sequence" option uses a smaller search space therefore is faster. They say it is an interface into BlastKOALA, thus, there should be no difference in the results for the same query/reference.

[qiyunzhu]

Thanks! That makes sense.