Practical and theoretical advances in predicting the function of a protein by its phylogenetic distribution.

ABSTRACT: The gap between the amount of genome information released by genome sequencing projects and our knowledge about the proteins' functions is rapidly increasing. To fill this gap, various 'genomic-context' methods have been proposed that exploit sequenced genomes to predict the functions of the encoded proteins. One class of methods, phylogenetic profiling, predicts protein function by correlating the phylogenetic distribution of genes with that of other genes or phenotypic characteristics. The functions of a number of proteins, including ones of medical relevance, have thus been predicted and subsequently confirmed experimentally. Additionally, various approaches to measure the similarity of phylogenetic profiles and to account for the phylogenetic bias in the data have been proposed. We rev

SUBMITTER: Kensche PR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2405902 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature