Introduction
Protein homology is a way to view sequence similarities between sequences for a protein, to help identify areas of conserved function [1]. Homology can infer a common ancestor or similar function between multiple organisms for the same protein. BLASTp is a widely used bioinformatics tool to compare protein sequences to determine homology. The program aligns the sequences and scores them to calculate the percent identity.
results
Conclusion
As this protein is heavily involved in collagen formation, many of the homologous organisms are animals due to its high abundance in this type of organism [2]. These results also indicate potential model organisms that could be used for further study. The protein sequences linked can also be compared to each other to examine phylogeny.
References
[1] Pearson WR. An introduction to sequence similarity ("homology") searching. Curr Protoc Bioinformatics. 2013;Chapter 3:3.1.1-3.1.8. doi:10.1002/0471250953.bi0301s42
[2] Harvard T.H. Chan. (2021, May 26). Collagen. The Nutrition Source. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/collagen/
[2] Harvard T.H. Chan. (2021, May 26). Collagen. The Nutrition Source. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/collagen/
This web page was produced as an assignment for Genetics 564, a capstone course at UW-Madison