Homologation, More Complicated Functionalization

The comparison of protein folds has proved to be difficult the three-dimensional structures are frequently complicated, and quite significant differences can exist between structures that are, on the basis of sequence similarity, clearly related in evolutionary terms. On the other hand structures may sometimes resemble each other very closely, but fail to display any sequence similarity the classic example of this is the parallel beta barrel structure which has now been found in more than twenty proteins with no amino-acid sequence homology [35], In these cases the interpretation of the meaning of a similarity can be less than straightforward it may indicate that the proteins are evolutionary related ( divergent evolution ), that they are unrelated but have evolved similar structures because they carry out similar functions ( convergent evolution ) or the common structure may simply be a particularly stable one that is adopted by a large number of proteins. In addition to three similarities between complete protein folds, there may also be partial similarities. [Pg.82]

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