EVOLUTIONARY MOTIF AND ITS BIOLOGICAL AND STRUCTURAL SIGNIFICANCE

We developed a method for multiple alignment of protein sequences. The main feature of this method is that it takes the evolutionary relatio nships of the proteins in question into account repeatedly for executi on, until the relationships and alignment results are in agreement. We then applied this method to the data of the international DNA sequenc e databases, which are the most comprehensive and updated DNA database s in the world, in order to estimate the ''evolutionary motif'' by ext ensive use of a supercomputer. Though a few problems needed to be solv ed, we could estimate the length of the motifs in the range of 20 to 2 00 amino acids, with about 60 the most frequent length. We then discus sed their biological and structural significance. We believe that we a re now in a position to analyze DNA and protein not only in vivo and i n vitro but also in silico.