title: Secator: a program for inferring protein subfamilies from phylogenetic trees.
abstract: With the huge increase of protein data, an important problem is to estimate, within a large protein family, the number of sensible subsets for subsequent in-depth structural, functional, and evolutionary analyses. To tackle this problem, we developed a new program, Secator, which implements the principle of an ascending hierarchical method using a distance matrix based on a multiple alignment of protein sequences. Dissimilarity values assigned to the nodes of a deduced phylogenetic tree are partitioned by a new stopping rule introduced to automatically determine the significant dissimilarity values. The quality of the clusters obtained by Secator is verified by a separate Jackknife study. The method is demonstrated on 24 large protein families covering a wide spectrum of structural and sequence conservation and its usefulness and accuracy with real biological data is illustrated on two well-studied protein families (the Sm proteins and the nuclear receptors).
authors.affiliation: LSIIT-ICPS (AXE E), UPRES-A CNRS 70005 Université Louis Pasteur, Illkirch, France.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wicker
authors.forename: G R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Perrin
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Thierry
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Poch
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D010802:Phylogeny; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D018160:Receptors, Cytoplasmic and Nuclear / Q000235:genetics; D017411:Ribonucleoproteins, Small Nuclear / Q000235:genetics; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins; D018160:Receptors, Cytoplasmic and Nuclear; D017411:Ribonucleoproteins, Small Nuclear