Convert blast tabular output to bed format

Question

[Denis]

I need to convert blast output in tabular format (format 6) to bed format. I'm interested only in qstart and qend coordinates (the 7th & 8th columns respectively). As far i know bed format is 0-based, but blast probably uses 1-based coordinates. Am i right?

So to do so with AWK i need to execute the code below:

cat balst_tabular_output.txt | awk '{print($2"\t"$7-1"\t"$8)}' > blast_otput.bed

[Denis]

I've manually checked blast output and corresponding query sequences. So, blast definitely uses 1-based coordinates.

Answer 1

[cschu181]

Yes, BLAST is 1-based and your conversion should be right (keeping qend 1-based makes it compatible with the open interval style that bed uses.)