Installation Instructions for Package rBLAST 1. Install BLAST+ The BLAST+ software needs to be installed on your system. The official installation instructions for different plattforms are available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK569861/ Windows ------- Follow the instructions at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK52637/ Linux/Unix ---------- Precombiled software package are already available for many Linux distributions. The package is typically called ⁠ncbi-blast+. For example on Debian/Ubuntu, the package can be installed using the APT package manager: apt-get install ncbi-blast+ MacOSX ------ The easiest approach is to use the .dmg installer file from https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/executables/blast+/LATEST/ 2. Checking that the path environment variables are correctly set R needs to be able to find the executable. The installers for LINUX/Unix and MacOSX set the correct values, so this is is mostly only an issue with Windows. After installing the software, try in R > Sys.which("blastn") If the command returns "" instead of the path to the executable, then you need to set the environment variable called PATH. In R Sys.setenv(PATH = paste(Sys.getenv("PATH"), "path_to_your_BLAST_installation", sep=.Platform$path.sep)) More details about setting the environment variables permanently can be found in the Windows installation guide at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK52637/