Molecular biologists using Apple computers can receive a speed boost if they use an optimized version of BLAST and the new Mac operating system OS X on a Macintosh G4. The new version of BLAST, called A/G BLAST, was engineered by Apple's Advanced Computation Group in conjunction with Genentech and was announced on 29 January at the O'Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference in Tucson Arizona. A/G BLAST is optimized to take advantage of the G4 processor's Altivec or 'Velocity Engine' components to substantially increase the speed and efficiency of running BLAST queries.