Distant protein sequence relationships and their detection were the focus of
the Guest Lecture given by Dr. William R. Pearson of the Department of
Biochemistry at the University of Virginia, USA, on December 5, 1995, at
the electronic conferencing system BioMOO, with participants connecting
>From 10 countries.
The edited transcript includes links to a slide show prepared by Dr. Pearson,
and is available at the following locations (WWW/hypertext):
http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/Lectures/pearson2.htmlhttp://merlin.mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu:8001/bcdusa/Lectures/pearson2.htmlhttp://info.mcc.ac.uk/hpctec/courses/Biocomputing/vsns/bcd/Lectures/pearson2.html
The statistical significance of similarity scores, and their implications on
homology and structural similarity were discussed first. Dr. Pearson then
explained how these scores can be corrected for the lengths of the sequences,
and how their accuracy can be assessed. Using additional searches to tell a
low-scoring related sequence from a high-scoring unrelated one was the
next topic of the 2-hour conference. Our guest explained that the usual
superiority of protein sequence comparisons (in contrast to the comparison
of the protein-coding DNAs) is due to knowledge about the coding frame,
and the length of the sequence, even though there is a loss of codon
information. The participants discussed this and a wide range of other issues
until the end of the lecture.
The Electronic Conference was organised by the VSNS Biocomputing
Division, sponsored by the Virtual School of Natural Sciences, and the
Association for the Promotion of Science and Humanities in Germany (see
http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/welcome.html). We would like to
thank Francisco De La Vega, Alexander Sczyrba, David Atherton, Andy
Tsouladze, Chris Lilley, Heinz Hemken, Eitan Rubin, Gustavo Glusman,
and other "BioMOO folks" (see http://bioinfo.weizmann.ac.il/BioMOO) for
their assistance.
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best wishes,
georg
fuellen at dali.Mathematik.Uni-Bielefeld.DE, fuellen at MIT.EDUhttp://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/techfak/persons/fuellen/georgF.html
