Understanding the “Horizontal Dimension” of Molecular Evolution to Annotate, Classify, and Discover Proteins with Functional Domains
Understanding the "Horizontal Dimension'''' of Molecular Evolution to Annotate, Classify, and Discover Proteins with Functional Domains

Protein evolution proceeds by two distinct processes: 1) individual mutation and selection for adaptive mutations and 2) rearrangement of entire domains within proteins into novel combinations, producing new protein families that combine functional properties in ways that previously did not exist. Domain rearrangement poses a challenge to sequence alignment-based search methods, such as BLAST, in predicting homology since the methodology implicitly assumes that related proteins primarily differ from each ot...