Help page for the NUMODs Finder server


Motif search method

Query sequence type

Understanding the output

Links

About NUMODs



Motif search method

The query is searched against all blocks of NUMODs using the Blimps progam. Reference: James C. Wallace & Steven Henikoff, "PATMAT: a searching and extraction program for sequence, pattern and block queries and databases", CABIOS 8 (1992), pp. 249-254.

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Query sequence type

The query can be a DNA or protein sequence in either FASTA, EMBL or GENEBANK formats. The program determines the type of the query (protein or DNA) automatically. The sequence type definition is based on occurrence of different letters for amino acids and nucleotides. Problems can arise if the query sequence format is incorrectly interpreted, for example, the title may be incorrectly combined with the sequence itself causing a DNA sequence to be interpreted as protein. The query sequence is shown in a output. Check that the sequence read in is of the correct type and length before interpreting your results.

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Understanding the output

The output is divided into 3 parts : Heading, Summary and Details.

Heading

Query = Description line from query sequence.

Size = Number of amino acids for protein query or base pairs for DNA query. Be sure this number is correct before interpreting your results.

Blocks searched =Number of blocks searched against the query. The searched blocks database of the server contains six blocks of four different NUMOD domains.

Alignments done =Number of alignments done between query and blocks searched. this number is used to determine the expected value for each hit.

Cutoff expected value = The statistical significance threshold for reporting hits . The default value is 1, meaning that one hit is expected to be found merely by chance.

Summary

This part summarizes the search results. There is one line description for each hit against the searched blocks database. The hits are sorted by their E-value. The combined E-value is the E-value for a single block hit for NUMODs 1-3.

Details

Detailed information is printed for each hit, including alignments with the most similar sequence in each block.

Frame: 0 for protein query, or 1,2,3,-1,-2,-3 for DNA query. Negative numbers represent a reverse DNA strand.

Location: Location of the segment similar to the block within query sequence in amino acids for protein or base pairs from 5' to 3' on the DNA query. If the hit was found on a reverse DNA strand the location is from 5' to 3' on that strand, that is from the 3' end of the forward strand.

Block E-value: Expected number of times the score this hit could be seen by chance in all alignments that were done (the number of the alignments is written in the Heading part).

Alignments: This part shows an alignment of the identified query sequence segment with the most similar motif from the block hit. Identical amino acids are joined by a line ( | ). Query amino acids different from those in the motif are shown in uppercase if they occur in that position in any motif from that block. Thus, an uppercase amino acid occurs at some other motif in this position, and a lowercase amino acid was never observed in this position in any motif of the block.

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Links

Blocks server
The NUMODs database
NUMODs main page.
view NUMOD3 structure with Chime.
Another motif search site at Dana Reichmann's D-Box site

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For comments and questions email to Einat Sitbon