Question

Both the Luscombe article (2001) and the Diniz article (2017) talk about the importance of finding similarities in biological data, in particular biological sequences such as DNA sequence or protein sequence. Comparing sequences is an important procedure in bioinformatics. For instance, when the genetic sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19 was released in January 2020, scientists quickly compared its sequence to the genetic sequences of other viruses. Why would this be an important first step in understanding the new coronavirus? What kind of knowledge can you gather from comparing genetic sequences like that?

Answer 1

Sequence alignment is very much necessary step to predict about genetic relatedness and phylogenetic relationship. When a new virus, such as Coronavirus emerges, the genetic relationship can be determined if we compare its genome with known sequences of other related viruses. Besides nucleotide sequence alignment, protein sequence alignment also provide many important information. It is often found that if there is similarity in primary amino acid sequence there is similarity in function also. So,if we find any sequence similarity of antigenic peptide from known viral protein with novel virus, such as Coronavirus, then we may assume that same type of antigen also present in new corona virus. So structure-function relationship can be deduced by comparing amino acid sequence. So sequence alignment can provide important information regarding phylogenetic relationship and also deduce function of any unknown protein sequence.