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The importance of a residue for maintaining the structure
and function of a protein can usually be inferred from
how conserved it appears in a multiple sequence alignment
of that protein and its homologues. CAMPO is
a tool useful for the identification of conserved amino-acid
sites among sequence homologues. Conserved amino-acid
sites were presumably subjected to similar constraints
during the divergent evolution of a family or superfamily
of proteins from a common ancestor; therefore they possibly
contain most of the determinants necessary to maintain
the fold and function of a protein. CAMPO
is a method for the automatic identification of these
sites, which assigns a score for each position of a
multiple sequence alignment based on the scores of a
mutational matrix, the sequence identity between sequences
being compared and, optionally, the distance between
clustered conserved residues. |