Introduction to Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

1. Introduction to Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Chem 204 Patsy Babbitt babbitt@cgl.ucsf.edu January 31, 2013

2. Elements of Bioinformatics & Computational Biology • Three levels of inquiry • Genomes • Proteins • Systems of proteins/genes/ligands • Multiple methods & tools • Physical: measurement, observation, perturbation • Fundamental disciplines: computer science, statistics/mathematics, specific domain knowledge • Applications: algorithms, models, knowledge representation and organization • Tools • genome assembly, gene calling, clustering, database searching, protein-ligand docking, comparative modeling, quantum/molecular mechanics ...

3. GFCHIKAYTRLIMVG… Anacystis nidulans Anabaena 7120 Condrus crispus Desulfovibrio vulgaris Two distinct sets of rules • Physics • Defines cause and effect from the bottom up, e.g. at a molecular level • folding • protein-ligand, protein-protein interactions • targeting & localization, machines • Defines cause and effect from the top down,e.g. systems in physical and temporal contexts • Evolution • acting on genes  proteins  pathways /systems? to direct emergence and disappearance of function

4. NCBI The annotation problem 29,266,939 protein sequences in UniProt/TrEMBL (1/30/13) • 7 x 109 metagenomic sequence reads by DOE as of 10/12 • Proportion for which annotations can be experimentally validated? • Proportion of ORFs that are annotated [correctly] with a molecular function?

5. Automated analysis is not enough without fundamental understanding • example: homology-based inference in the absence of rules describing the underlying association between structure and function leads to errors in database annotation Schnoes et al, PLoS Comp Bio 5: e1000605 (2009)

6. Sequence Conservation Conservation Conservation Structure Function • Functional annotation of all of the gene products of genomes cannot be achieved experimentally or even from first principles • Requires the use of [computational] comparative genomics • Assumption: What is conserved in a gene [protein] family is functionally important • due to purifying selection driven by functional constraints observable in a background described by the theory of neutral evolution • fast enough that pseudogenes rapidly deteriorate over evolutionary timescales • in any prokaryotic genome, homologs from more than one distantly related species are detectable for 70-80% of proteins • Application: Comparison of sequence/structures can identify homologous relationships, allowing inference of functional properties based on that relationship

7. a Duplication paralogous a b Speciation paralogous a b a b orthologous Molecular Evolution:Some definitions • Homologous: Share a common ancestor by descent or recombination; may have similar or dissimilar molecular functions • Orthology: similarity as a consequence of a speciation event • Parology: similarity between the descendants of a duplicated ancestral gene • Xenology: appearance in an organism due to horizontal gene transfer • Convergently evolved: perform the same function, have some similar structural characteristics, but do not share a common ancestor

8. Ancestral sequence T T Edge Branch sequence 1 sequence 2 Root Node Terminal nodes Internal nodes Assumptions and Caveats • Phylogenetic reconstruction assumes homology across the set of sequences to be evaluated • Differences among these sequences are assumed to derive from gene duplication followed by mutations and/or rearrangements • Both the mechanisms and rates of divergence are critical issues for phylogenetic reconstruction • A multiple alignment of homologous sequences provides the necessary data for counting nucleotide or amino acid substitutions used in phylogenetic reconstruction

9. 200 Fibrinopeptides 150 Hemoglobin changes/100 amino acids 100 50 Cytochrome C 0 millions of years since divergence (from 2004 Mol.Evolution Workshop at Woods Hole: Pearson) 0 200 400 600 800 1000 • Evolutionary history is accessed only through contemporary species and molecules • For highly diverse sequences, obtaining a high confidence multiple alignment may be challenging • The quality of a phylogenetic tree is no better than the quality of the underlying alignment • Simplifying assumptions don’t always hold • Independence of changes at each site or in different copies of a gene? • Do all sites changes at the same rate? • Do all genes evolve at the same rate?

10. A C T G A C G T A A C T ® C ® A G A ® G C ® G G ® C ® A T A A C ® A T G A ® T C ® G G ® A T A ® T ® A A A C • A A • T G G G • T G G A A T T A A Another complication: 12 mutations accumulated Differences detected at only 3 sites PAM*250 = 250 nucleotide changes/100 amino acids *Point accepted mutation

11. Sequence analysis provides access to genomics/related information • because it represents the primary data, accessing genomics Web sites via sequence comparison bypasses problems associated with searching using key words, gene names, various types of accession #s • ATCCGTAAC... ~exact match similar match • Access to many types of info about a gene/protein • localization (genome browsers) • organism DBs • specialty DBs (ex: Mouse knockouts, expression data) • proteomics data • Near & distant homologs in multiple species • primary sequence DBs • precalculated family DBs • gene families within a species of interest (ex: GPCRs)

12. Annotation of molecular function in proteins

13. D10 D10 Protocol for [non-trivial] functional inference 0. Sources of sequence & structure data & annotation • Identify [divergent] homologs using sequence & structure • Cluster the data at appropriate granularity • Orthogonal approaches: genome localization & metabolic context, comparative genomics, in silico docking • Map conserved elements of sequence & structure to conserved elements of function • Experiment!

14. 0. Sources of sequence data & annotation • Archive sites - comprehensive • Genbank (NCBI) • library; Genbank does’t own its annotations • UniProt/TrEMBL • computer annotated translations of EMBL annotated nucleotide sequences • Curated resources • UniProt/SwissProt ~500,000 sequences • manually reviewed knowledge base w Gene Ontology (GO) terms, functions, refs, post-translational modifications, domains & functional sites, similarities to other proteins, diseases associated w variants, etc. • organisms DBs • metagenomics DBs • thematic DBs • MEROPS (proteases) • GPCRDB (G-protein coupled receptors) • Structure-Function Linkage Database (SFLD), Catalytic Site Atlas, Mechanism, Annotation and Classification in Enzymes (MACiE) (enzymes)

15. Classification of protein sequence information • InterPro • Functional analysis & classification into “families” (updated ~every 8 weeks) • Site & domain prediction using predictive models (“signatures”) from member databases of UniProt Consortium • Used by the Gene Ontology Annotation group to automatically assign Gene Ontology terms • Member databases • CATH/Gene3D at University College, London, UK • PANTHER at University of Southern California, CA, USA • PIRSF at the Protein Information Resource, Georgetown University Medical Centre, Washington DC, USA • Pfam at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK • PRINTS at the University of Manchester, UK • ProDom at PRABI Villeurbanne, France • PROSITE and HAMAP at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), Geneva, Switzerland • SMART at EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany • SUPERFAMILY at the University of Bristol, UK • TIGRFAMs at the J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD, US

16. Classification & analysis using Gene Ontology (GO) • Community collaboration for consistent descriptions of gene products in different databases • 3 structured vocabularies (ontologies) • Main tasks • Development/maintenance of the ontologies (incomplete for enzymes, for example) • Annotation of gene products integrating data from collaborating databases • Tools development

17. Gene Ontology Annotation • UniProt-GOA database aims for high quality GO annotation for UniProt Knowledge Base • Many member & other databases use GO terms to facilitate uniform queries across them • Evidence codes describe the types of evidence associated with annotations & are used by SwissProt, SFLD, many other DBs Computation Author Experiment Nothing known Y Y

18. Identification of divergent homologs • Sequence-based methods • pairwise alignment & database searching • profile & other probabilistic methods • pre-computed solutions: Pfam • motif analysis • Structure-based methods • structural alignment • fold-based comparisons • motif analysis

19. Pairwise alignment • How to find a relationship between a query sequence & one or more additional sequences? • correspondence between 2 aligned sequences • similarity score • graphical views: dot plots, alignments, motifs, patterns • candidate homologs evaluated using statistics • Formalizing the problem Given: two sequences that you want to align Goal: find the best alignment that can be obtained by sliding one sequence along the other Requirements: • a scheme for evaluating matches/mis-matches between any two characters • a score for insertions/deletions (gaps) • a method for optimization of the total score • a method for evaluating the significance of the alignment

20. Scoring systems • The degree of match between two letters can be represented in a matrix and changing the matrix can change the alignment • Simplest: Identity (unitary) matrix • Better: Definitions of similarity based on inferences about chemical or biological properties • Examples: PAM, Blosum, Gonnet, profiles, HMMs, neural network models, etc. • Score has the form pab /qa qb where pab is the probability that residue a is substituted by residue b, and qa and qb are the background probabilities for residue a and b respectively • Scores historically derived empirically from an evolutionary model describing expected evolutionary change by point mutations (scoring gaps not accommodated in the models) • models used to define expected numbers & types of mutations based on evolutionary distance • Example: PAM* = unit of evolutionary distance between 2 sequences • 1 PAM = 1 accepted point mutation event/100 residues • 200 PAM = 200 point mutations/100 residues • JTT, an updated version of PAM used in many phylogenetic programs

21. BLOSUM (BLOcks SUbstitution Matrices)(Henikoff & Henikoff, “Amino acid substitution matrices from protein blocks,” PNAS USA 89:10915-19, 1992) • generated from data from multiple aligned sequence segments from families, clustered at various similarity thresholds & corrected to avoid sampling bias • statistical rather than an evolutionary model (can’t use directly in phylogenetic inference) • derived using highly conserved segments from divergent proteins rather than using the most mutable positions among highly similar proteins (PAM matrices) • for a given matrix, sequences identical at >X% eliminated to avoid bias due to over-representation, e.g., Blosum 62 reflects observed substitutions between segments <62% identical • for short sequences (9-21 residues), you have to use a different matrix such as PAM30

22. Statistical Significance • For DB searching, the ONLY criteria available to judge the likelihood of an evolutionary relationship between 2 sequences is an estimate of statistical significance • to determine if the alignment score has statistical meaning, compare it with the score generated from the alignment of random sequences • a model of random sequences is needed • simplest: choose the amino acid residues in a sequence independently, with background probabilities • comparing a query sequence to a set of random sequences of uniform length results in scores that obey an extreme value distribution rather than a normal distribution, the use of which can lead to overestimation of an alignment’s significance (Altschul et al. “Issues in searching molecular sequence databases,” Nat Gen 6: 119-129, 1994)

23. blastp protein vs protein blastn DNA vs DNA blastx 6-frame conceptual translation products of a nucleotide query (both strands) against a protein database tblastn protein query against a nucleotide sequence database dynamically translated in all six reading frames (both strands) tblastx 6-frame translations of a nucleotide query sequence against the 6-frame translations of a nucleotide sequence database Finding putative homologs: Database searching • BLAST (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Education/BLASTinfo/information3.html) • Major heuristic algorithms speed up searching but compromise sensitivity (slightly) • more recent Gapped Blast versions incorporate gaps • Generates alignments & estimates of statistical significance • Different scoring matrices/other parameters provide tuning

24. Extending our reach: Psi-Blast, etc.Altschul et al, Nuc Ac Res, 17:3389-402 (1997)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/tutorial/Altschul-2.html • Generalizes BLAST algorithm to use a position-specific score matrix (PSSM) in place of a query sequence & associated substitution matrix for searching the databases • Position-specific score matrix generated from the output of a gapped Blast search, i.e., profile defined in the initial Blast search in place of a single query sequence • Results in a database search tuned to the specific sequence characteristics of interest • Good at finding remote homologs but contains no clustering information • Profiles can “drift” • An application of early profile analysis (Gribskov et al, PNAS USA 84:4355-4358, (1987) • information in a multiple alignment is represented quantitatively as a table of position-specific symbol comparison values and gap penalties • all information in the alignment is used • implementations available for both for database searching/sequence alignment

25. Pre-computed solutions at UniPro & elsewhere • Pfam: Multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) and HMMs for many protein domains http://pfam.sanger.ac.uk/ • Tigerfams: Families defined on MSAs & HMMs for sequence classification http://www.tigr.org/TIGRFAMs/ • Superfamily: structural and functional protein annotations for >2400 completely sequenced genomes • covering all proteins of known structure (SCOP superfamilies) represented by hidden Markov models (HMMs) http://supfam.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/SUPERFAMILY/ • Probabilistic methods have become a primary approach for identification of potential homologs & sequence comparison • hidden Markov models (see Singh.HMM1.pdf)

26. Motif analysis (sequence) • Many variants of motif searching [in proteins] available • Consensus-based, e.g., Prosite http://expasy.nhri.org.tw/prosite/ • Manually annotated motifs, distant relationships, e.g., PRINTS http://umber.sbs.man.ac.uk/dbbrowser/PRINTS/ • Statistical, e.g., MEME (Multiple EM for Motif Elicitation) http://meme.sdsc.edu/meme/website/intro.html • Database searching, e.g., PHI-BLAST http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/ • Motif-finding algorithms developed for finding transcription factor binding sites, RNA motifs, other problems related to finding short sequence signals • Low information content of TF binding sites requires specialized approaches • linguistic approach: MOBY DICK (Hao Li) • Applications • Identification of distant homologs • Anchoring multiple alignments

27. Protein Structure Comparison • Requirements are similar to those for sequence comparisons • a score for insertions/deletions • a method for optimization of the total score • a method for evaluating the significance of the alignment • mismatches tend to be ignored & most algorithms report a score over the # of C that can be aligned • Structure-Structure comparison • structural alignment • fold-based comparison • “fine structure” comparison (3D motifs) • Sequence-Structure comparison • threading

28. <15% identical E.C. 3.8.1.2 Structure comparison • BLASTP, BLAST 2seq find no statistically significant similarities • Using phosphonatase as a query, Delta BLAST finds • Swiss-Prot: 2-haloacid dehalogenase as the 106th hit in a search of Swiss-Prot, E-value = 2 x10-28, 17% ID • Non-redundant Genbank: 0 hits against non-redundant Genbank

29. Structure comparison <15% identical E.C. 3.8.1.2

30. The Protein Data Bank (PDB)http://www.rcsb.org • US data source for all experimentally determined structures • Many tools, resources for analysis & visualization of structures • portal to Structural Genomics data & Centers • links to other structure databases worldwide, including Europe, Japan

31. Structural alignment • Focused on superposing 2 or more structures • major methods produce pairwise alignments • Problem: Find the best way to superimpose 2 structures in 3D • Requirements • an alignment providing a list of correspondences between residues in 2 or more proteins • a measure of structural [dis]similarity • RMSD (root mean square deviation) • intramolecular distance • orientation in 2° structure • overall 2° content • Methods are heuristic • primary methods don’t generate optimal solutions • Given current methods, structural alignment has nothing to do with evolutionary history

32. Fold-based comparisons • Major methods produce pairwise alignments • Dali (Distance Alignment Matrix) (Holm & Sander) • breaks the input structures into hexapeptide fragments and calculates a distance matrix by evaluating the contact patterns between successive fragments • used to generate the FSSP database (families of structurally similar proteins) • SSAP (Sequential Structure Alignment Program) (Orengo) • using -carbons, inter-residue distance vectors used to generate a series of matrices for all pairs & optimal local alignments calculated from these, then summed to produce overall alignment • used to construct the CATH protein structure classification database • VAST (Vector Alignment Search Tool) (Bryant - NCBI) • represents structures as a set of vectors representing secondary structural elements (SSEs) • topology inferred from type, directionality & connectivity of SSEs • TM-Align (Zhang & Skolnick), FAST (Zhu & Weng) • fast methods producing good alignments • None of these methods give the same answer, even when proteins are relatively similar • See: “Advances & pitfalls of protein structural alignment” Hasegawa & Holm, Curr Op Struct Biol 19:341 (2009)

33. Classification of the [protein] structural universe • Major resources for hierarchical classification • Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) (http://scop.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/scop/) • manual classification • structure & sequence • superfamilies classified using inference of homology & similar function • primary gold standard for structural comparison & algorithm development • SUPERFAMILY (http://supfam.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/SUPERFAMILY/) • protein domain assignments at SCOP superfamily, family levels • generated using expert curated profile HMMs • superfamilies defined based on structural, functional, evolutionary data • CATH protein structure classification (http://www.cathdb.info) • major levels: Class(C), Architecture(A), Topology(T) & Homologous superfamily (H) • semi-automated • structure & sequence • Dali Fold Index - FSSP (families of structurally similar proteins)

34.  SCOP (2/09) – latest update: 6/09

35. <15% identical E.C. 3.8.1.2 Why use sequence information when structure works better?

36. Clustering families/subgroups within a superfamily:Using multiple alignments for evaluation of sequence relationships • Multiple alignments provide more information than pairwise alignments • Screening for membership in a family/superfamily • Identification of conserved elements important to function • Determination of the level and sites of variability across the members of subgroups/families/ superfamilies • “Speciation” over multiple alignment space helps to connect and confirm widely degenerate motifs • Issues & caveats, especially for divergent sequences (<30% ID) • inability to produce a single multiple alignment from correctly aligned subsets of the input sequences • sensitivity to the number of sequences used • sensitivity to the specific sequences used for multiple alignment

37. BLASTP 2.0a19MP-WashU Query= /phosphonatase/phosBc.gcg (302 letters) Database: swissprot Smallest Sum High Probability Sequences producing High-scoring Segment Pairs: Score P(N) N sp|P77247|YNIC_ECOLI HYPOTHETICAL 24.3 KD PROTEIN IN PFKB... 116 2.2e-05 1 sp|O67359|GPH_AQUAE PHOSPHOGLYCOLATE PHOSPHATASE (PGP) 106 0.00030 1 sp|O06995|PGMB_BACSU PUTATIVE BETA-PHOSPHOGLUCOMUTASE (BE... 97 0.0039 1 sp|P31467|YIEH_ECOLI HYPOTHETICAL 24.7 KD PROTEIN IN TNAB... 94 0.0082 1 sp|P44755|GPH_HAEIN PHOSPHOGLYCOLATE PHOSPHATASE (PGP) 93 0.011 1 sp|P54607|YHCW_BACSU HYPOTHETICAL 24.7 KD PROTEIN IN CSPB... 89 0.030 1 sp|P32662|GPH_ECOLI PHOSPHOGLYCOLATE PHOSPHATASE (PGP) 87 0.067 1 ~ 21% identical

38. D10 K151 S176

40. Other issues for multiple alignments • Statistics for multiple alignments not as well developed as is the theory for pairwise alignments • Algorithmic issues • computational complexity: a true multiple alignment of N sequences requires an N-dimensional matrix • no single “correct” multiple alignment can be achieved except in trivial cases • all methods assume sequences are independent rather than related by a phylogenetic tree in which different branches evolve at different rates (see MUSCLE slide for one solution) • sensitivity to the # of sequences used • sensitivity to the specific sequences used for a multiple alignment • filtering to remove redundancy difficult to do without losing information all of these seqs = 35-50% identical filtering w 35% ID cut-off requires us to choose one sequence to represent the group using a less stringent filtering cutoff to include more sequences produces a different alignment

41. Multiple Alignment Methods • Profile-based progressive alignment: early errors propagate throughout • Thompson, JD et al., “ClustalW": Improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice,” NAR 22:4673, 1994 • Sievers, F et al., “Clustal Omega”: Fast, scalable generation of high-quality protein MSAs,” Mol Sys Biol 7:539, 2011 (improved guide tree, final MSA computed using profile-profile alignment) • Consistency-based methods: pair-wise alignments improved via comparison to an intermediate sequence; allows incorporation of heterogenous data • Notredame et al, “T-Coffee: A novel method for fast and accurate multiple sequence alignment,” JMB 302: 205, 2000 • Progressive interative: re-align groups of sequences within an MSA • Edgar, RC “MUSCLE: a multiple sequence alignment method with reduced time and space complexity,” BMC Bioinformatics 19:113, 2004 • Template-based: adds information from structural/other template type • O’Sullivan et al, “3DCoffee: combining protein sequences & structures withing MSAs,” JMB 340:385, 2004 • Pei et al, “PROMALS3D: a tool for multiple protein sequence & structure alignments,” NAR 36:2295, 2008 • Others of note: • Sadreyev et al, “COMPASS: a tool for comparison of multiple protein alignments with assessment of statistical significance,” JMB 326:317, 2003 • Katoh et al, “MAFFT: a novel methods for rapid multiple sequence alignment based on fast Fourier transform,” NAR 30: 3059, 2002

42. PROMALS3D • Based on PROMALS, a consistency aligner, which incorporates 2° information to increase alignment accuracy (better gap placement) • Uses 3D structures to guide sequence alignment by PROMALS leading to improved accuracy • Outputs consensus alignment consistent with both sequences & structures • Multiple input structures can be used • One of the best available programs for automated alignment of divergent sequences

43. Why structure-based multiple alignment is important

44. Hidden Markov Models & Profile Methods • HMMs are also useful for multiple alignments, family generation (Pfam) • Profile HMM methods use a multiple alignment to generate a position-specific scoring system useful for searching databases for remote homologs • Combining phylogenetic inference and HMMs: SATCHMO (Edgar RC & Sjolander K, Bioinformatics 19: 1404-1411, 2003) • Sequence alignment and tree construction using hidden Markov models • Simultaneously constructs a tree and a set of multiple sequence alignments, one for each internal node in the tree • Predicts and aligns only those positions considered “alignable” based on information content • Profile HMMs constructed for the sequences at each node, which are then used to determine branching order, alignment, and to predict structurally alignable regions. • Excellent visualization system with a point-and-click, tree-based interface

45. Phylogenomics(see Brown & Sjölander, PLoS CB:2, e77 (2006)) • Combines sequence & evolutionary information to improve functional inference • addresses errors in annotation transfer based on simple homology inference, e.g., pairwise comparisons (BLAST) • distinguishes orthologs (related by speciation) from paralogs (related by duplications) • based on assumption that orthologs are likely to perform the same [specific] function but paralogs may not • overlays tree with experimental data, well-curated annotations, domain & structural information, etc. • function inferred only for orthologs • Ortholog databases • eggNOG (automated extension to COGs/KOGs) • InParanoid (reliable ortholog pairs in eukaryotes) • OrthoMCL (uses multiple genomes & a clustering step for greater sensitivity)

46. Evolutionary Trace: combining sequence & structural information(see papers by O. Lichtarge) • Takes advantage of the larger context provided by a family-based view of proteins to improve the accuracy of binding site determination • Uses sequence-based clustering of related proteins to distinguish class-specific differences in ligand binding determinants across a particular family or superfamily of proteins. • The sequence information derived from multiple alignments and phylogenetic clustering is leverage by mapping class specific patterns likely to be functionally important onto crystal structures and structural models 1. Select nodes 2. Select class conserved regions 3. Map selections to structure

47. Multiple Alignment (structure) • FATCAT (Flexible structure AlignmenT by Chaining Aligned fragment pairs allowing Twists) (Godzik) • flexible protein structure comparison by optimizing the alignment & minimizing the number of rigid-body movements (twists) around pivot points (hinges) introduced in the reference structure • POSA (Partial Order Structure Alignment) generates a multiple flexible structure alignment using partial order graphs • Multiprot (Nussinov & Wolfson) • true multiple alignment algorithm rather than just an assembly of pairwise alignments • handles circular permutation

48. 3D Motifs • “Fine structure” motifs for db searching & family classification • Manually generated or automated methods to capture conserved 3D signals of side-chains & functionally important regions • Residue conservation in sequence alignments & spatial clustering often considered • Active Site Profiling (Fetrow/Skolnick) • Spasm (Kleywegt) GASPS (Polacco & Babbitt) • ASSAM (Artymiuk/Willett) • TESS/JESS (Thornton) • DRESPAT (Wangikar)

49. Active site profiling • Identify local structural features around a functional site using a set of distances between C • Project motifs onto sequence to create a signature • Identify homologs from signature(s) & align generate profile(s) • Cluster profiles to identify functionally distinct families Cammer, SA et al, J Mol Biol (2003) 334:387-401

50. PHP subgroup: CpsB/esp N terminal a polymerase III C terminal X family polymerase PHP standalone family Histidinol phosphatase FluG TatD/ MttC ACMSD Mtn/ Nodulin Lig subgroup SsnA SdeB Previously Identified* adenosine deaminase, AMP deaminase, adenine deaminase, cytosine deaminase, urease, hydantoinase, developmental proteins, dihydroorotase, allantoinase, D-aminoacylase, imidazolonepropionase, phosphotriesterase (opd), arylphosphatase, s-triazine hydrolase (TrzA), FwdA AtzA family GlucI PspA L-hyd AtzB family Pro Iad AgaA PhnM NagA AtzC Sggf ces ACCD AepA Clustering for very large superfamilies • Amidohydrolasesuperfamily (currently >37,000 sequences) • 30 experimentally characterized rxns, many wxray structures • ?? unknown functions • many roles important to human health • main metabolism, e.g., purine/pyrimidine degradation, pyrimidine biosynthesis, amino acid metabolism • roles in specialty metabolism • urea cycle & metabolism of amino groups, lignin • biodegradation of toxic compounds • atrazine • organophosphate esters (parathion/others) • as carrier molecules for drug delivery in cancer Jennifer Seffernick