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Introduction
The first protein structures were solved in the early 1970s, and as more were deposited in the Protein Databank (PDB) it became clear that many homologous proteins have structures that are conserved throughout evolution, providing a powerful signal to trace evolutionary ancestry and to recognize families of proteins. For example, while the amino acid sequences of hemoglobins from human and sperm whale share less than 20% identical residues, their tertiary structures are highly similar. In their pioneering studies of evolution in protein structure families, Chothia and Lesk demonstrated the relationship between sequence and structure and showed that, especially in the core of the protein domain, the structure is much more highly conserved than sequence and can be used to recognize even very distant evolutionary relationships (Chothia and Lesk 1986).
A number of structure-based classifications of proteins emerged to capture this structural...
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Cuff, A., Orengo, C. (2013). Domain Structure Classifications. In: Roberts, G.C.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Biophysics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16712-6_414
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16712-6_414
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