Henikoff J G, Henikoff S
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington 98104, USA.
Methods Enzymol. 1996;266:88-105. doi: 10.1016/s0076-6879(96)66008-x.
Protein blocks consist of multiply aligned sequence segments without gaps that represent the most highly conserved regions of protein families. A database of blocks has been constructed by successive application of the fully automated PROTOMAT system to lists of protein family members obtained from Prosite documentation. Currently, Blocks 8.0 based on protein families documented in Prosite 12 consists of 2884 blocks representing 770 families. Searches of the Blocks Database are carried out using protein or DNA sequence queries, and results are returned with measures of significance for both single and multiple block hits. The databse has also proved useful for derivation of amino acid substitution matrices (the Blosum series) and other sets of parameters. WWW and E-mail servers provide access to the database and associated functions, including a block maker for sequences provided by the user.
蛋白质模块由无间隙的多重比对序列片段组成，这些片段代表蛋白质家族中高度保守的区域。通过将全自动PROTOMAT系统连续应用于从Prosite文档中获取的蛋白质家族成员列表，构建了一个模块数据库。目前，基于Prosite 12中记录的蛋白质家族的Blocks 8.0由2884个模块组成，代表770个家族。使用蛋白质或DNA序列查询对模块数据库进行搜索，并返回单模块命中和多模块命中的显著性度量结果。该数据库还被证明对推导氨基酸替换矩阵（Blosum系列）和其他参数集很有用。万维网和电子邮件服务器提供对该数据库及相关功能的访问，包括为用户提供的序列生成模块的工具。
