Assessment of Molecular (Dis)similarity: The Role of Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) Programs in Biological Research

摘要

Multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) are powerful tools in modern molecular biology that rely on sequence comparison methods. Based on MSAs, structural models, functional predictions, and phylogenetic trees can be created. MSAs are also used to infer the function of newly sequenced genes, predict new members of gene families, explore evolutionary relationships, sequence annotation, structural and functional predictions for genes and proteins. In this review, we emphasize the practical application of different MSA methods.