Question

Which of the following is incorrect about protein structure comparison?

(a) The comparative approach is important in finding remote protein homologs

(b) Protein structures have a much higher degree of conservation than the sequences

(c) Protein structures have a much lesser degree of conservation than the sequences

(d) Proteins can share common structures even without sequence similarity

The question was asked in homework.

Enquiry is from Protein Structure Comparison topic in section Structural Bioinformatics of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

The correct choice is (c) Protein structures have a much lesser degree of conservation than the sequences

To explain I would say: Structure comparison is one of the fundamental techniques in protein structure analysis. Structure comparison can often reveal distant evolutionary relationships between proteins, which is not feasible using the sequence-based alignment approach alone. In addition, protein structure comparison is a prerequisite for protein structural classification into different fold classes.