Entering edit mode
3 months ago
dec986
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370
Consider a trivially small multiple sequence alignment (MSA) of four peptides:
AAAA
-AAA
--AA
---A
I quantify gaps along the "x" axis, by simply stating what fraction of proteins are present/defined at that position. The small MSA above, would have values of 1,2,3,4. I call this "mean # of proteins" or "mean protein presence".
My explanation of this metric is confusing other people.
Is there a more commonly accepted metric that would explain this concept more simply? and be less confusing to others?
Isn't this usually looked at the "other way around" in terms of the column occupancy (http://prody.csb.pitt.edu/tutorials/evol_tutorial/msaanalysis.html)?