Brief Bioinform. 2019 Jul 19;20(4):1560-1567. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbx121.
PHAST (PHAge Search Tool) and its successor PHASTER (PHAge Search Tool - Enhanced Release) have become two of the most widely used web servers for identifying putative prophages in bacterial genomes. Here we review the main capabilities of these web resources, provide some practical guidance regarding their use and discuss possible future improvements. PHAST, which was first described in 2011, made its debut just as whole bacterial genome sequencing and was becoming inexpensive and relatively routine. PHAST quickly gained popularity among bacterial genome researchers because of its web accessibility, its ease of use along with its enhanced accuracy and rapid processing times. PHASTER, which appeared in 2016, provided a number of much-needed enhancements to the PHAST server, including greater processing speed (to cope with very large submission volumes), increased database sizes, a more modern user interface, improved graphical displays and support for metagenomic submissions. Continuing developments in the field, along with increased interest in automated phage and prophage finding, have already led to several improvements to the PHASTER server and will soon lead to the development of a successor to PHASTER (to be called PHASTEST).
PHAST（PHAge Search Tool）及其后续版本 PHASTER（PHAge Search Tool - enhanced Release）已成为两种最广泛用于识别细菌基因组中推定噬菌体的网络服务器。本文回顾了这些网络资源的主要功能，提供了一些关于其使用的实用指南，并讨论了可能的未来改进。PHAST 于 2011 年首次描述，在全基因组测序变得廉价且相对常规时首次推出。PHAST 因其网络可访问性、易于使用以及增强的准确性和快速处理时间，在细菌基因组研究人员中迅速流行起来。PHASTER 于 2016 年推出，为 PHAST 服务器提供了许多急需的增强功能，包括更快的处理速度（以应对非常大的提交量）、更大的数据库大小、更现代的用户界面、改进的图形显示以及对宏基因组提交的支持。该领域的持续发展以及对自动化噬菌体和原噬菌体发现的兴趣增加，已经导致 PHASTER 服务器进行了多次改进，并将很快开发出 PHASTER 的后继版本（称为 PHASTEST）。
