A new method of research on molecular evolution of pro-teinase superfamily

The molecular evolutionary tree, also known as a phylogenetic tree, of the serine proteinase superfamily was constructed by means of structural alignment. Three-dimensional structures of proteins were aligned by the SSAP program of Orengo and Taylor to obtain evolutionary distances. The resulting evolutionary tree provides a topology graph that can reflect the evolution of structure and function of homology proteinase. Moreover, study on evolution of the serine proteinase superfamily can lead to better understanding of the relationship and evolutionary difference among proteins of the superfamily, and is of significance to protein engineering, molecular design and protein structure prediction. Structure alignment is one of the useful methods of research on molecular evolution of protein.