BLOSUM 62
In which we search for Elvis, using blastp, and find out how old we would have to be to see Elvis in a Las Vegas club.
Introduction
Once you're acquainted with proteins, amino acids, and the kinds of bonds that hold proteins together, we can talk about using this information to evaluate the similarity between protein sequences. We can easily imagine that if two protein sequences are identical, then those proteins would have the same kind of activity. But what about proteins that are similar in some regions, and not others, or proteins that only share some of the same amino acids in similar…