HPMV: human protein mutation viewer - relating sequence mutations to protein sequence architecture and function changes.

Next-generation sequencing advances are rapidly expanding the number of human mutations to be analyzed for causative roles in genetic disorders. Our Human Protein Mutation Viewer (HPMV) is intended to explore the biomolecular mechanistic significance of non-synonymous human mutations in protein-coding genomic regions. The tool helps to assess whether protein mutations affect the occurrence of sequence-architectural features (globular domains, targeting signals, post-translational modification sites, etc.

Powerful sequence similarity search methods and in-depth manual analyses can identify remote homologs in many apparently "orphan" viral proteins.

The genome sequences of new viruses often contain many "orphan" or "taxon-specific" proteins apparently lacking homologs. However, because viral proteins evolve very fast, commonly used sequence similarity detection methods such as BLAST may overlook homologs. We analyzed a data set of proteins from RNA viruses characterized as "genus specific" by BLAST.