Which of the following tool is used by MAKER to align ESTs/mRNA-seq assemblies to the genome: BLASTN TBLASTN BLASTX BLASTP

The tool used by MAKER to align ESTs/mRNA-seq assemblies to the genome is BLASTN.

Here's a step-by-step explanation:

1. MAKER is a genome annotation pipeline that combines several tools and databases to produce a set of gene predictions.

2. One of the steps in this pipeline is the alignment of ESTs (Expressed Sequence Tags) and mRNA-seq assemblies to the genome. This is done to find regions of the genome that are actively being transcribed into RNA.

3. To perform this alignment, MAKER uses the tool BLASTN.

4. BLASTN is a tool in the BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) suite that is specifically designed for comparing nucleotide sequences.

5. Therefore, BLASTN is the tool used by MAKER for this step of the annotation process. The other tools mentioned (TBLASTN, BLASTX, BLASTP) are also part of the BLAST suite, but they are used for different types of sequence comparisons.