Making Use of Conservation Patterns

From what was said in the previous paragraphs, it appears that the specific conservation pattern of a protein family can be used to predict whether the proteins are enzymes, bind metal ions, or rather have a structural or regulatory role. If the proteins are known to be enzymes, the conservation pattern can be used to predict which residues are part of the active site, and possibly also which catalytic mechanism is being used. For example, it would be straightforward to submit a family of structurally uncharacterized proteases to that type of analysis in order to find out whether they are serine proteases, aspartate proteases, metalloproteases, or if they belong to a different class. Moreover, it is possible to compare the family s conservation pattern with those of other, better characterized enzyme families this approach will be discussed in more detail in Sect. 5.6. 

Finally, there is a small number of cases, where members of an enzyme family have, in the course of evolution, assumed a different catalytic role, using a different 

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