A sequence alignment in bioinformatics is a way of arranging DNA,
RNA,
or protein primary sequences to emphasize their regions of
similarity,
which may indicate functional or evolutionary relationships between
the genes or proteins in the query. Aligned sequences are typically
written with their characters (generally representing amino acids or
nucleotides) in columns into which gaps are inserted so that residues
with identical or similar characters are aligned in the successive
columns. If two sequences in an alignment share a common ancestor,
mismatches can be interpreted as point mutations and gaps as indels
(that is, insertion or deletion mutations) introduced in one or both
lineages in the time since they diverged from one another. In
protein
sequence alignment, the degree of similarity between amino acids
occupying a particular position in the sequence can be interpreted as
a rough measure of how conserved a particular region or sequence
motif
is among lineages.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_alignment
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Today's selected anniversaries:
475:
Flavius Orestes took control of Ravenna, the capital of the Western
Roman Empire, forcing Emperor Julius Nepos to flee.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes_(Roman_soldier))
1565:
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine in Spanish Florida, the
oldest continually occupied European settlement in the continental
United States.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine%2C_Florida)
1845:
The first issue of Scientific American was published.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_American)
1850:
The romantic opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner was first performed in
Weimar, Germany.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohengrin_(opera))
1963:
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream)
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Wikiquote of the day:
"Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and
in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own." --
Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe)