Functional Constraint Profiling of a Viral Protein Reveals Discordance of Evolutionary Conservation and Functionality.

ABSTRACT: Viruses often encode proteins with multiple functions due to their compact genomes. Existing approaches to identify functional residues largely rely on sequence conservation analysis. Inferring functional residues from sequence conservation can produce false positives, in which the conserved residues are functionally silent, or false negatives, where functional residues are not identified since they are species-specific and therefore non-conserved. Furthermore, the tedious process of constructing and analyzing individual mutations limits the number of residues that can be examined in a single study. Here, we developed a systematic approach to identify the functional residues of a viral protein by coupling experimental fitness profiling with protein stability prediction using the influenza

SUBMITTER: Wu NC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4489113 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature