Question

The more conserved amino acids in similar proteins from different species are ones that play an essential role in structure and function and the less conserved are in sites that can vary without having a significant effect on function.

(a) True

(b) False

This question was posed to me in an interview.

The doubt is from Use of Scoring Matrices and Gap Penalties in Sequence Alignments topic in section Sequence Alignment of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

The correct option is (a) True

To explain I would say: There are many factors that influence both the location and types of amino acid changes that occur in proteins. Wilbur (1985) has tested the Markov model of evolution and has shown that it can be valid if certain changes are made in the way that the PAM matrices are calculated.