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Few-shot learning (FSL) has emerged as an effective learning method and shows great potential. Despite the recent creative works in tackling FSL tasks, learning valid information rapidly from just a few or even zero samples remains a serious challenge. In this context, we extensively investigated 200+ FSL papers published in top journals and conferences in the past three years, aiming to present a timely and comprehensive overview of the most recent advances in FSL with a fresh perspective, and to provide an impartial comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of existing work. To avoid conceptual confusion, we first elaborate and contrast a set of relevant concepts including few-shot learning, transfer learning, and meta-learning. Then, we inventively extract prior knowledge related to few-shot learning in the form of a pyramid, which summarizes and classifies previous work in detail from the perspective of challenges. Furthermore, to enrich this survey, we present in-depth analysis and insightful discussions of recent advances in each subsection. What’s more, taking computer vision as an example, we highlight the important application of FSL, covering various research hotspots. Finally, we conclude the survey with unique insights into technology trends and potential future research opportunities to guide FSL follow-up research.

Bioinformatics is the new branch of science which deals with the acquisition, storage, analysis and dissemination of biological data with the help of computer science and information technology. It has the enormous ability to analyze a vast quantity of biological data quickly and cost-effectively. In the past decades, enormous sequence information has been generated due to the advances in DNA and protein sequencing techniques. Estimating similarities between biological sequences is becoming necessary to obtain hidden information present within the sequence and to trace evolutionary relationship exist within the sequences. This sequence comparison can be achieved by basic local alignment search tool (BLAST). So BLAST has become a fundamental tools of life science research. Hence it is essential to know how to do sequence comparison using BLAST and how to accurately interpret the BLAST output data. The present article aims to familiarize the biologists and researchers with different BLAST programs and their use in research program.

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