A new method of research on molecular evolution of proteinase superfamily

The molecular evolutionary tree, also known as a phylogenetic tree, of the serine proteinase superfamily was constructed by means of structural alignm ent. Three-dimensional structures of proteins were aligned by the SSAP prog ram of Orengo and Taylor to obtain evolutionary distances. The resulting ev olutionary tree provides a topology graph that can reflect the evolution of structure and function of homology proteinase, Moreover, study on evolutio n of the serine proteinase superfamily can lead to better understanding of the relationship and evolutionary difference among proteins of the superfam ily, and is of significance to protein engineering, molecular design and pr otein structure prediction. Structure alignment is one of the useful method s of research on molecular evolution of protein.