Flashcards on Bioinformatics: Sequence Analysis and Prediction

Bioinformatics: Sequence Analysis and Prediction Guide for Students

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What biological factors influence protein scoring matrices?

Conservation (absolute and conservative substitutions), residue frequency (rare vs common residues), and evolution (different matrices for different e

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Protein sequence scoring matrices

23 cards

Card 1

Question: What biological factors influence protein scoring matrices?

Answer: Conservation (absolute and conservative substitutions), residue frequency (rare vs common residues), and evolution (different matrices for different e

Card 2

Question: What does 'conservation' account for in scoring matrices?

Answer: It accounts for absolute conservation and conservative substitutions, representing which residues may be substituted by which other residues.

Card 3

Question: How does residue frequency affect scoring matrices?

Answer: Scoring takes into account how often particular residues occur; rare residues are weighted differently from common residues.

Card 4

Question: Why are different scoring matrices used for different evolutionary rates?

Answer: Because substitution patterns vary with evolutionary distance, different matrices better reflect replacement probabilities at different rates of evolu

Card 5

Question: What principle explains higher replaceability among certain amino acids?

Answer: Amino acids are more likely to replace others within the same physico-chemical groups, so replaceability is higher within those groups.

Card 6

Question: What is BLOSUM62?

Answer: A specific amino-acid scoring matrix (BLOSUM62) that gives substitution scores for each pair of amino acids.

Card 7

Question: How are scores in matrices like BLOSUM62 calculated conceptually?

Answer: They represent log-odds ratios comparing observed replacement frequencies to expected frequencies under random replacement.

Card 8

Question: What does a positive score in a substitution matrix indicate?

Answer: That two residues replace each other more often than expected by chance.

Card 9

Question: What does a negative score in a substitution matrix indicate?

Answer: That two residues replace each other less often than expected by chance.

Card 10

Question: What is the log-odds score S_{i,j} for two residues i and j in a scoring matrix formula?

Answer: S_{i,j} = log (q_{i,j} / (p_i p_j)), where q_{i,j} is the observed alignment frequency of i with j and p_i, p_j are background frequencies of residues