· top level
§ betterment of human civilization, cure diseases
§ learn information about life on this planet
· The nitty gritty -
§ determine if new DNA sequences were already deposited in
databanks
§ find proteins homologous to a putative coding ORF
§ find repeat elements or regulatory sequences
§ locate false priming sites for a set of PCR oligonucleotides
· evolution
§ Useful tool as alternate experimentation on humans
§ because evolution exists experiments can be performed on simpler organisms and the results extracted to apply to humankind
Homology
Homologous sequence is one which is similar to another sequence and the similarity is derived from common ancestry.
Homologous proteins are similar in their folding or structure
Generally homology infers sequence similarity to a high degree, but this is not always the case
Homology searches are a useful tool to narrow your search for future experiments