Question

Which of the following is incorrect regarding pair wise sequence alignment?

(a) The most fundamental process in this type of comparison is sequence alignment

(b) It is an important first step toward structural and functional analysis of newly determined sequences

(c) This is the process by which sequences are compared by searching for common character patterns and establishing residue-residue correspondence among related sequences

(d) It is the process of aligning multiple sequences

The question was posed to me in an interview.

This interesting question is from Sequence Homology Versus Sequence Similarity and Identity topic in division Pairwise Sequence Alignment of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

The correct answer is (d) It is the process of aligning multiple sequences

Explanation: Pair wise sequence alignment is the process of aligning two sequences and is the basis of database similarity searching and multiple sequence alignment. As new biological sequences are being generated at exponential rates, sequence comparison is becoming increasingly important to draw functional and evolutionary inference of a new protein with proteins already existing in the database.