Question

SCOP is _______ based on manual comparison of structures by human experts with no quantitative criteria to group proteins.

(a) entirely

(b) almost entirely

(c) not

(d) partially

This question was addressed to me in a national level competition.

Query is from Protein Structure Classification in portion Structural Bioinformatics of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

The correct answer is (b) almost entirely

For explanation: It is argued that this approach offers some flexibility in recognizing distant structural relatives, because human brains may be more adept at recognizing slightly dissimilar structures that essentially have the same architecture. However, this reliance on human expertise also renders the method subjective. The exact boundaries between levels and groups are sometimes arbitrary.