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How Scores are given in Substitution matrix like PAM and BLOSUM?

hi everyone..

while aligning two protein sequences, amino acid of the query sequence n amino acid of Database sequence is aligned..if both match a score is given..if there is a substitution of aminoacid for eg ( leucine for Isoleucine).how score is given for this alignement?

or simply any one explain how subsitution matrix compares two sequence and align according to the substitution scoring matrix?

alignment blast

thank u..I can understand what is substitution matrix..but i couldn't able to understand how log odd scores are given for aminoacid alignment ..can u explain by applying that formula for a small stretch of Sequence..

2 answers

The Wikipedia page that Istvan links to actually discusses how such matrices are built. You can find a worked example for a very small "block" in my lecture notes on the BLOSUM substitution matrix. Basically, the scores given in BLOSUM are log-odds scores that represent the level to which a particular mutation (aligned amino-acid pair) is observed in a set of conserved "blocks" vs. what you would expect by chance given the abundance of these amino acids.

That is a really nice set slides on the subject

There are many resources that describe the concept, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_matrix

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