HOMOLOGOUS GENE FAMILY DATABASE COMPILATION

Studies of homolog evolution and interpretation of mutational patterns are useful approaches for investigating the structural and functional information contained in sequences. To increase the accuracy and reliability of these approaches, a systematic comparative analysis of the evolutionary modes of sequence families is needed. The first step in such an analysis is the compilation of possible families from databases. The goal of this work is to develop algorithms and software for compiling homologous genes coding for proteins from the GenBank database. Stages in the database compilation are described, and the resulting database is used for studying evolutionary modes of gene families.