title: Cascade PSI-BLAST web server: a remote homology search tool for relating protein domains.
abstract: Owing to high evolutionary divergence, it is not always possible to identify distantly related protein domains by sequence search techniques. Intermediate sequences possess sequence features of more than one protein and facilitate detection of remotely related proteins. We have demonstrated recently the employment of Cascade PSI-BLAST where we perform PSI-BLAST for many 'generations', initiating searches from new homologues as well. Such a rigorous propagation through generations of PSI-BLAST employs effectively the role of intermediates in detecting distant similarities between proteins. This approach has been tested on a large number of folds and its performance in detecting superfamily level relationships is approximately 35% better than simple PSI-BLAST searches. We present a web server for this search method that permits users to perform Cascade PSI-BLAST searches against the Pfam, SCOP and SwissProt databases. The URL for this server is http://crick.mbu.iisc.ernet.in/~CASCADE/CascadeBlast.html.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, 560 012, Bangalore, India.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bhadra
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sandhya
authors.forename: K R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Abhinandan
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chakrabarti
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sowdhamini
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Srinivasan
mesh_terms: D020407:Internet; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012984:Software