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BMCBI
2007

False occurrences of functional motifs in protein sequences highlight evolutionary constraints

13 years 11 months ago
False occurrences of functional motifs in protein sequences highlight evolutionary constraints
Background: False occurrences of functional motifs in protein sequences can be considered as random events due solely to the sequence composition of a proteome. Here we use a numerical approach to investigate the random appearance of functional motifs with the aim of addressing biological questions such as: How are organisms protected from undesirable occurrences of motifs otherwise selected for their functionality? Has the random appearance of functional motifs in protein sequences been affected during evolution? Results: Here we analyse the occurrence of functional motifs in random sequences and compare it to that observed in biological proteomes; the behaviour of random motifs is also studied. Most motifs exhibit a number of false positives significantly similar to the number of times they appear in randomized proteomes (=expected number of false positives). Interestingly, about 3% of the analysed motifs show a different kind of behaviour and appear in biological proteomes less tha...
Allegra Via, Pier Federico Gherardini, Enrico Ferr
Added 09 Dec 2010
Updated 09 Dec 2010
Type Journal
Year 2007
Where BMCBI
Authors Allegra Via, Pier Federico Gherardini, Enrico Ferraro, Gabriele Ausiello, Gianpaolo Scalia Tomba, Manuela Helmer-Citterich
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