Question

The main application of pairwise alignment is retrieving biological sequences in databases based on similarity.

(a) True

(b) False

The question was asked in a national level competition.

My doubt stems from Heuristic Database Searching in chapter Database Similarity Searching of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Correct option is (a) True

Easiest explanation: This process involves submission of a query sequence and performing a pairwise comparison of the query sequence with all individual sequences in a database. Thus, database similarity searching is pairwise alignment on a large scale. This type of searching is one of the most effective ways to assign putative functions to newly determined sequences.