Desperate measures

Things are not getting any clearer. The mystery gene fragment is highly similar to lef, as you'd expect from the identity of the protein sequences, BUT WHY DIDN'T BLAST FIND THE DNA SEQUENCE???

In desperation, you compare the two DNA sequences by pairwise Blast. Now, there's no need to do this. You already know the answer — you just finished comparing the two sequences with your own eyes. But you need to see if Blast has gone crazy.

It has, for here are the results.

In brief, when you translate this sequence, it is 100% identical to anthrax toxin. When you compare it by eye, it is almost identical to the lef gene that encodes part of the anthrax toxin. When you ask Blast, the most heavily used program in all of bioinformatics, to do a simple comparison of the two DNA fragments, it finds nothing.

WHAT'S GOING ON???

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