Question

Which of the following is untrue about Amino acid conservation?

(a) It has been known for some time that conservation of residues at the surface of a protein family is often related to function

(b) Conservation of residues at the core of a protein family is often related to function

(c) This may be an enzyme active-site or binding site

(d) Unlike hydrophobicity or electrostatic potential, displaying residue conservation on the molecular surface has no physical or chemical basis

This question was posed to me in an internship interview.

My query is from Molecular Complementarity topic in portion Predicting the Structure of Protein – Biomolecular Interactions of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

The correct answer is (b) Conservation of residues at the core of a protein family is often related to function

To elaborate: However, the evolutionary information can sometimes delineate a functional epitope allowing residues to be identified that are important for binding. In order to infer structure-function relationships, the proteins must be structurally related, preferably a large family of proteins with related function.