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On the Evidence for Partial Gene Duplication from Amino Acid Sequence of Bovine Glutamate Dehydrogenase (reply)

Nature volume 247, page 557 (1974)Cite this article

Abstract

Dr ENGEL replies: Williams and Wilkins have done the evidence less than justice in two respects: (1) Our disagreement hinges upon the choice of a basis for statistical assessment of the observed sequence match. Absolute validity can neither be attained nor defined; one can only attempt to select reasonable criteria. My original probability calculation may have been too arbitrarily exclusive but, equally, Williams's and Wilkins's computer-search is too arbitrarily all-inclusive. To ignore relevant information must bias the calculation against discovery of the truth. The evidence for the importance of lysine-126 comes not only from studies of kinetics and binding (see ref. 1), but also from sequence comparisons which show that lysine-126 is in a conserved region2–4. This being so, even fifty may be an overestimate of the necessary number of sequences containing lysine-126 to be compared.

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References

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  1. Department of Biochemistry, University of Sheffield, S10 2TN

    P. C. ENGEL

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  1. P. C. ENGEL
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ENGEL, P. On the Evidence for Partial Gene Duplication from Amino Acid Sequence of Bovine Glutamate Dehydrogenase (reply). Nature 247, 557 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/247557a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/247557a0

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