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. [](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/actions/workflows/cmake.yml) [](https://cirrus-ci.com/github/bbuchfink/diamond/master) [](https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond/releases) [](https://anaconda.org/bioconda/diamond) [](https://anaconda.org/bioconda/diamond/files) [](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=kjPIF1cAAAAJ) [](https://discord.gg/ptJnz3GSCy) [](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, Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen. 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. \[[:email:Email](mailto:buchfink@gmail.com)\] \[[X](https://x.com/bbuchfink)\] \[[Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/bbuchfink.bsky.social)\] \[[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-j-buchfink-875692105/)\] \[[Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=kjPIF1cAAAAJ)\] \[[Drost lab](https://drostlab.com/)\] \[[MPI-BIO](https://www.bio.mpg.de/)\] **When using the tool in published research, please cite:** - 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) For sequence clustering: - 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) 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)