Research article

The meaning of alignment: lessons from structural diversity

Walter Pirovano , K Anton Feenstra and Jaap Heringa

Centre for Integrative Bioinformatics VU (IBIVU), VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081A, 1081HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands

author email corresponding author email

BMC Bioinformatics 2008, 9:556doi:10.1186/1471-2105-9-556

Published:	23 December 2008

Abstract

Background

Protein structural alignment provides a fundamental basis for deriving principles of functional and evolutionary relationships. It is routinely used for structural classification and functional characterization of proteins and for the construction of sequence alignment benchmarks. However, the available techniques do not fully consider the implications of protein structural diversity and typically generate a single alignment between sequences.

Results

We have taken alternative protein crystal structures and generated simulation snapshots to explicitly investigate the impact of structural changes on the alignments. We show that structural diversity has a significant effect on structural alignment. Moreover, we observe alignment inconsistencies even for modest spatial divergence, implying that the biological interpretation of alignments is less straightforward than commonly assumed. A salient example is the GroES 'mobile loop' where sub-Ångstrom variations give rise to contradictory sequence alignments.

Conclusion

A comprehensive treatment of ambiguous alignment regions is crucial for further development of structural alignment applications and for the representation of alignments in general. For this purpose we have developed an on-line database containing our data and new ways of visualizing alignment inconsistencies, which can be found at http://www.ibi.vu.nl/databases/stralivari webcite.