![]() Book of Abstracts: Albany 2007![]() Conversation 15 June 19-23 2007 Structurally conserved and variant regions in protein domain superfamilies: themes emerging from evolutionary divergenceEvolutionarily closely-knit proteins, the homologues, retain similarity at most levels: sequence, structure and function. My laboratory is interested in distant relationships such as ?superfamilies? where small structural variations set in, owing to high evolutionary divergence, that in turn affect precise function. I will present the fascinating problem of how nature provides structural and functional themes amongst protein domains of a superfamily despite poor sequence similarity. I will next present some of our thoughts and analyses on structurally conserved motifs and variant units of protein domain superfamilies revolving around the theme of evolutionary divergence.
![]() The current analyses suggest that exchange, insertion and deletion of chemical groups happen amongst domains of a protein superfamily in a non-random manner even at very poor sequence identities in protein domain superfamilies. R. Sowdhamini National Centre for Biological Sciences (TIFR) |