期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：1985
卷号：82
期号：10
页码：3073-3077
DOI：10.1073/pnas.82.10.3073
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Currently there are several computer algorithms available for aligning two biological sequences. When more than two sequences are to be aligned, however, pairwise comparisons using these methods rarely lead to a consistent alignment of the sequences. One obvious solution to this problem is to compare all the sequences simultaneously. Here we present an algorithm for the simultaneous comparison of three biological sequences. The algorithm is an extension of the method developed by S. B. Needleman and C. D. Wunsch, but it decreases the almost prohibitively long computing time required by a direct naive extension to a practical level: it takes time proportional to the cube of the mean sequence length, in comparison to the fifth power time taken by the direct extension. Simultaneous comparison not only gives a consistent alignment of the three sequences, but it could also reveal homologous residues in the sequences that might be overlooked by the pairwise comparisons. As an example of the application of the algorithm, three copper-containing proteins, plastocyanin, stellacyanin, and cucumber basic blue protein, are compared.
