title: Significant similarity and dissimilarity in homologous proteins.
abstract: Common practice emphasizes significant sequence similarities between different members of protein families. These similarities presumably reflect on evolutionary conservation of structurally and functionally essential residues. The nonconserved regions, on the other hand, may be either selectively neutral or differentiated. We propose several distributional sequence statistics (e.g., clustering of charged residues, compositional biases, and repetitive patterns) as indicators of differentiation events. These ideas are illustrated with various examples, including comparisons among G protein-coupled receptors, herpesvirus proteins, and GTPase-activating proteins.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Stanford University, California 94305.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Karlin
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Brendel
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bucher
mesh_terms: D019204:GTP-Binding Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D006564:Herpesviridae / Q000235:genetics; D025542:Neurofibromin 1; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014764:Viral Proteins / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D025542:Neurofibromin 1; D011506:Proteins; D014764:Viral Proteins; D019204:GTP-Binding Proteins