Species-identification Memes

DNA Subway is this educational bioinformatics platform that's supposed to guide students through DNA barcoding and species identification with a nice, user-friendly interface. The joke here is that instead of using the intuitive "subway line" workflow the platform offers, someone just said "nah" and went straight to BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) - the OG sequence comparison tool that every molecular biologist knows and loves. It's like being given a GPS with turn-by-turn directions but deciding to navigate by the stars instead. Sure, DNA Subway has pretty graphics and step-by-step modules, but when you're trying to identify what species that mystery DNA belongs to, why mess around when you can just throw your sequence into NCBI BLAST and get results in seconds? The "So anyway, I started blasting" format captures that perfect moment when you skip all the fancy educational scaffolding and go straight to the nuclear option. Sometimes the most direct path is just... blasting your sequence against GenBank's entire database and calling it a day.