Scanning protein sequence databanks using a distributed processing workstation network.

The programme pscan has been developed to distribute protein databank scans over a network of computers that share a common file system. pscan may be used in conjunction with most conventional sequence comparison programmes with few modifications. In test runs using the Smith-Waterman dynamic programming algorithm, the time required to scan a 6858 sequence databank using a query sequence 740 residues long was reduced from approximately 50 min for a single processor, to approximately 11 minutes for five processors. Accordingly, pscan provides a low-cost, portable alternative to dedicated parallel processing computers.