Computational Methods for Protein Sequence Comparison and Search

Abstract

Protein sequence comparison and search has become commonplace not only for bioinformatics researchers but also for experimentalists in many cases. Because of the exponential growth in sequence data, sequence comparison in particular has become an increasingly important tool. Relating a new gene sequence to other known sequences often reveals its function, structure, and evolution. Many sequence comparison and search tools are available through public Web servers, and biologists can use them easily with little knowledge of computers or bioinformatics. This unit provides some theoretical background and describes popular tools for dot plot, sequence search against a database, multiple sequence alignments, protein tree construction, and protein family and motif search. Step-by-step examples are provided to illustrate how to use some of the most well-known tools. Finally, some general advice is given on combining different sequence analysis tools for biological inference.

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