Molecular Evolution: Computer Analysis Of Protein And Nucleic Acid Sequences

Preface Since its initiation, Methods in Enzymology has tried to keep abreast of developments in all areas important to biochemistry. Increasingly, this has meant moving into the realm of molecular biology. The main objective has remained the same, nonetheless: putting ready-to-use methods into the hands of the at-the-bench scientist, This volume is no exception. Still, this may be the first Methods in Enzymology volume in which the expression “pH” is never mentioned and the word buffer, if used at all, has nothing to do with aqueous solutions! The past decade has witnessed nothing less than a flood of nucleic acid and protein sequence data, the management of which would simply be impossible without computers. The chapters in this volume address a variety of areas in which computers are used to manage and manipulate sequences. The manipulations include searching, aligning, and determining the significance of similarities, as well as the construction of phylogenetic trees that show the evolutionary history of related sequences. This relatively new field of sequence-computing has stimulated interest from a variety of more established disciplines as is apparent from the diverse backgrounds of the contributing authors. Thus, investigators in mathematics and statistics, taxonomy and cladistics, and protein and nucleic acid chemistry are all represented, each bringing different perspectives and insights. All the authors were asked, however, to make an effor