<img src="/../../../../bbuchfink/diamond-data/blob/main/diamond_coat_of_arms2.png" height=280>

Introduction
============

DIAMOND is a sequence aligner for protein and translated DNA searches,
designed for high performance analysis of big sequence data. The key
features are:

-   Pairwise alignment of proteins and translated DNA at 100x-10,000x
    speed of BLAST.
-   Clustering protein sequences with high sensitivity and scalability
    including linear-time scaling and parallelization across many
    compute nodes.
-   Frameshift alignments for long read analysis.
-   Low resource requirements and suitable for running on standard
    desktops or laptops.
-   Various output formats, including BLAST pairwise, tabular and XML,
    as well as taxonomic classification.

[![Build](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/actions/workflows/cmake.yml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/actions/workflows/cmake.yml)
[![image](https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bbuchfink/diamond/total)](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/releases)
[![image](https://anaconda.org/bioconda/diamond/badges/version.svg)](https://anaconda.org/bioconda/diamond)
[![Conda](https://img.shields.io/conda/dn/bioconda/diamond.svg)](https://anaconda.org/bioconda/diamond/files)
[![image](https://img.shields.io/badge/dynamic/json?url=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Fbbuchfink%2Fdiamond-data%2Frefs%2Fheads%2Fmain%2Fcitations.json&query=%24.citations&style=flat&label=Citations&color=%23a020f0
)](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=kjPIF1cAAAAJ)
[![image](https://img.shields.io/badge/Live%20chat-Discord-red)](https://discord.gg/ptJnz3GSCy)
[![European Galaxy server](https://img.shields.io/badge/usegalaxy-.eu-brightgreen?logo=data:image/png;base64, )](https://usegalaxy.eu/root?tool_id=bg_diamond)


Documentation
=============
The online documentation is located at the [GitHub Wiki](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/wiki).

Support
=======
DIAMOND is actively supported and developed software. Please use the [issue tracker](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/issues) for malfunctions and the [GitHub discussions](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/discussions) for questions, comments, feature requests, etc. I also provide live support on [Discord](https://discord.gg/ptJnz3GSCy). Don't be too shy to ask!

Contributing
============
See [Contributing](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/wiki/Contributing).

About
=====
DIAMOND is developed by Dr. Benjamin J. Buchfink, independent scientist, Tübingen, Germany,
supported by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science. From 2019-2024,
it was developed by Benjamin J. Buchfink at the [Drost lab](https://drostlab.com/), [Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen](https://www.bio.mpg.de/).
From 2018-2019, its development was supported by the German Federal Ministry
for Economic Affairs and Energy through an EXIST grant. From 2016-2018, it was developed
by Benjamin J. Buchfink as an independent researcher. From 2013-2015, the initial version
was developed by Benjamin J. Buchfink at the Huson lab, University of Tübingen, Germany.

\[[:email:Email](mailto:buchfink@gmail.com)\]
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\[[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-j-buchfink-875692105/)\]
\[[Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=kjPIF1cAAAAJ)\]
\[[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIAMOND_(biotechnology))\]

Publications:

-   Buchfink BJ, Barbé É, Ashkenazy H, Reuter K, Kennedy JA, Drost HG, \"Clustering the protein
    universe of life using DIAMOND DeepClust\", *Nature Methods* **23**, 724-727 (2026).
    [doi:10.1038/s41592-026-03030-z](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-026-03030-z)

-   Buchfink BJ, Reuter K, Drost HG, \"Sensitive protein alignments at tree-of-life
    scale using DIAMOND\", *Nature Methods* **18**, 366–368 (2021).
    [doi:10.1038/s41592-021-01101-x](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-021-01101-x)

Original publication to cite DIAMOND until v0.9.25:

-   Buchfink BJ, Xie C, Huson DH, \"Fast and sensitive protein alignment
    using DIAMOND\", *Nature Methods* **12**, 59-60 (2015).
    [doi:10.1038/nmeth.3176](https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3176)
