Pattern Searches in Protein Sequences

Dominique Koua, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland
Frédérique Lisacek, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland

Published online: June 2012

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0006222.pub2

Common amino acid patterns characterise protein families. The results of automated searches for such patterns are used to qualify protein structure and function and to explore evolutionary relationships. Considering the increasing number of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and protein sequences generated by high‐throughput technologies, pattern search is commonly undertaken in the identification of new protein function or the elucidation of biological processes. A wide array of pattern matching methods has been implemented. They aim at identifying the constraints governing the occurrence of amino acids in protein regions. These constraints are expressed as probabilities or as templates or both to set the basis of automated search.

Key Concepts:

  • Protein families are structured on the basis of common sequence patterns.
  • Patterns constrain the nature and the position of amino acids.
  • Patterns are matched to templates called signatures or profiles.
  • Computing significant scores in addition to building realistic predictive models are the basic requirements for accurate identification by pattern matching.

Keywords: motif; pattern; fingerprint; signature; profile; domain; protein family; pattern matching

Figure 1. Motifs are representative of protein families and domains. They are translated into motif descriptors for automatic detection. The various methods described in the text are split into two main categories: deterministic and probabilistic. As a general trend deterministic methods tend to reflect the constraints on the occurrence of amino acids (qualitative), whereas probabilistic methods mainly rely on frequency calculations (quantitative).
Figure 2. Use of motif detection for proteome annotation. The ypbE gene product of Bacillus subtilis strain 168 is of unknown function. It does not look like any other protein sequence beside a few found in other B. subtilis strains; however, it is found to belong to the Lysin motif protein family (accession number PF01476 in the PFAM database) since positions 191–236 delineate a pattern known as the Lysin motif. Common features of proteins in this family can provide hints for further understanding of the ypbE protein.
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    ePath MEME http://meme.sdsc.edu/meme/
    ePath Nested MICA http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Software/analysis/nmica/
    ePath PFAM (database of protein families) http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Pfam/
    ePath PROSITE http://prosite.expasy.org/
    ePath SLiMFinder http://bioware.ucd.ie/slimfinder.html
    ePath TEIRESIAS and MUSCA http://cbcsrv.watson.ibm.com/Ttwpd.html

Related Sub-Topics:

Basic Cell Biology, Protein, RNA and DNA | Techniques in Cell Biology | Protein Structure | Bioinformatics | Computational Molecular Biology
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Article Title: Pattern Searches in Protein Sequences
 
How to Cite close
Koua, Dominique, and Lisacek, Frédérique(Jun 2012) Pattern Searches in Protein Sequences. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0006222.pub2]