Tabular fields of DIAMOND.m8 file

Question

[frcamacho]

Hi all,

I am using the DIAMOND aligner and I have been trying to find what the different fields in the DIAMOND blast tabular file (.m8) are. The fields aren't listed on the DIAMOND github page or paper. Does anyone know what the different tabs are?

Thanks!

Answer 1

[Chris Fields]

They are supposed to be the same as the default tabular BLAST+, output (-outfmt 6 or -m 8):

'qseqid sseqid pident length mismatch gapopen qstart qend sstart send evalue bitscore'

...
           qseqid means Query Seq-id
           sseqid means Subject Seq-id
           pident means Percentage of identical matches
           length means Alignment length
         mismatch means Number of mismatches
          gapopen means Number of gap openings
           qstart means Start of alignment in query
             qend means End of alignment in query
           sstart means Start of alignment in subject
             send means End of alignment in subject
           evalue means Expect value
         bitscore means Bit score

EDIT: edit down descriptors to the relevant ones, and to fix BLAST+ option.

[SES]

Just a minor clarification, it should be '-outfmt 6' for blast+ and '-m 8' for legacy blast. It would be easier if they were the same.

[Chris Fields]

Edited to fix that, thanks, completely slipped by me. And I agree, would have been nice to keep the numbering consistent.