Dissecting the roles of local packing density and longer-range effects in protein sequence evolution.

ABSTRACT: What are the structural determinants of protein sequence evolution? A number of site-specific structural characteristics have been proposed, most of which are broadly related to either the density of contacts or the solvent accessibility of individual residues. Most importantly, there has been disagreement in the literature over the relative importance of solvent accessibility and local packing density for explaining site-specific sequence variability in proteins. We show that this discussion has been confounded by the definition of local packing density. The most commonly used measures of local packing, such as contact number and the weighted contact number, represent the combined effects of local packing density and longer-range effects. As an alternative, we propose a truly local measur

SUBMITTER: Shahmoradi A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5292938 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature