<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I have a couple of contigs, and I would like to answer questions of the following sort</p>

<p>a.) Are they unique?</p>

<p>b.) Which organism do they come from?</p>

<p>c.) Do they come from a protein encoding gene?</p>

<p>d.) What is that protein's function etc...</p>

<p>I am very new to Bioinformatics (even Bio for that matter) so any help would be appreciated. Even links to further readings. 
Thanks.</p>

<p>What about starting with a simple NCBI BLAST ? <a href="http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi">http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi</a>
using the <strong>blastx</strong> algorithm ("useful for finding similar proteins to those encoded by a nucleotide query").  You can later use the "<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/taxblasthelp.shtml">Taxonomy reports</a>" to get a list of the organisms found in your query.</p>