Extract text from DNA and protein sequences (FASTA)
To convert FASTA sequences to another format, you need NCBI BLAST or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Bioinformatics Sequence Format" file type, you need software like NCBI BLAST or a similar tool.
The .FASTA file format is a standardized text-based format used in bioinformatics to store nucleotide (DNA/RNA) or peptide (amino acid) sequences. Developed in 1985 by David J. Lipman and William R. Pearson, it represents sequences using single-letter codes. Each entry begins with a single-line description marked by a greater-than (>) symbol, followed by lines of sequence data. It is natively read by sequence analysis software like NCBI BLAST, BioEdit, and Clustal Omega. You can read more about its technical specifications on Wikipedia.
Despite being the de facto standard in genomics, the .FASTA format has distinct disadvantages. Because it is purely plain text, it completely lacks the structure necessary to hold complex biological annotations, genomic features, or rich metadata. Additionally, because the format simply wraps long character strings across multiple lines under a single header line, it is notoriously difficult to parse in standard office software. Operating systems do not recognize the file extension by default, and opening it in spreadsheet software results in messy, unreadable data.
To overcome these limitations, converting the file is often necessary. For tabular data analysis in R, Python, or spreadsheet applications, convert your .FASTA to CSV or TSV. If you require rich biological annotations alongside the raw sequence, target GFF or GB (GenBank) formats. For simple human-readable sharing without needing specialized software, convert to TXT.
Convert.Guru analyzes your FASTA file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted FA, FAS, FSTA, FASTQ, FNA, TXT, GZ, AB1, ZIP, FAA, STATISTICS, PDF and CSV files.
If you want to convert FASTA file to CSV, TXT, GENBANK, BAM, JSON, VCF, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI or CFG, you can use NCBI BLAST or similar software from the "Biological sequence data storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to FASTA, try NCBI BLAST or another comparable tool in the "Biological sequence data storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our FASTA converter.