What have we here?

// ===============================================================
// "BLAST is the first thing applied to figure out what we have
//  found," said Russ Altman, a Stanford professor of
//  bioengineering, genetics and medicine.
//
// "Because of the common descent of all living things, it is
//  often possible to learn a lot about a new DNA sequence by
//  finding out what is known about other sequences that are
//  similar," Altman said. BLAST compares the new sequence to an
//  enormous database of sequences. "It estimates the significance
//  of the match between the input sequence and the 'hits' that
//  are pulled out. This is where Sam's contribution was—he worked
//  out the statistical theory for how to judge which matches
//  really meant something.
//
// "So BLAST is basically the Google of biological research."
//
//       - about Samuel Karlin (Stanford Report, January 16, 2008)
// ===============================================================

    while (key.compareTo(seq[i]) != 0) {
      i += step;
    }