Figure 1

Simple example illustrating the essence of the algorithm. The input is a multiple sequence alignment (a protein family) in which residue conservation patterns are not obvious, except for highly conserved residues (dark blue blocks). More subtle but functionally important conservation patterns become evident after reordering the sequences and grouping them into subfamilies (output). In our algorithm, it is precisely the conservation pattern of the specificity residues (red blocks) that determines the grouping. For example, the third specificity residue is conserved as Q in the first subfamily, as R in the second, as E in the third, and as L in the fourth. An optimal subfamily arrangement of sequences has a minimal value of a sum of combinatorial entropy differences (for details, see Materials and methods).