title: The limits of protein sequence comparison?
abstract: Modern sequence alignment algorithms are used routinely to identify homologous proteins, proteins that share a common ancestor. Homologous proteins always share similar structures and often have similar functions. Over the past 20 years, sequence comparison has become both more sensitive, largely because of profile-based methods, and more reliable, because of more accurate statistical estimates. As sequence and structure databases become larger, and comparison methods become more powerful, reliable statistical estimates will become even more important for distinguishing similarities that are due to homology from those that are due to analogy (convergence). The newest sequence alignment methods are more sensitive than older methods, but more accurate statistical estimates are needed for their full power to be realized.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA. wrp@virginia.edu
authors.forename: William R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Pearson
authors.forename: Michael L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Sierk
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D030562:Databases, Protein; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011506:Proteins / Q000032:analysis / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000145:classification; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins