3/28/20

Bioinformatics II:
PAM matrices
Dr Manaf A Guma
University of Anbar- college of applied science-Heet.
Department of chemistry

Before we start, what is the difference between point mutation and

frameshift mutation?

• Point mutation is an alteration of a single nucleotide in a gene

whereas frameshift mutation involves one or more nucleotide
changes of a particular gene.

• Point mutations are mainly nucleotide substitutions, which lead to

silent, missense or nonsense mutations. Frameshift mutations occur by
insertion or deletion of nucleotides.

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Define?
• Nonsense Mutations: the alteration of a nucleotide in a
particular codon may introduce a stop codon to the gene. This
stops the translation of the protein at halfway of the complete
protein.

• Silent mutations, a single base pair has changed in a

particular codon, the same amino acid is coded by the altered
codon as well.

• Missense mutations, once the alteration occurs in a particular

codon by a nucleotide substitution, the codon is altered in such
a way to code a different amino acid.

Point accepted mutation

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PAM matrices: Background and concepts

• How the PAM work?

1. Only mutations are allowed.

2. Sites evolve independently.

3. Evolution at each site occurs according to a

Markov equation.

• It follows Markov process.? How?

What is Markov concept?

• Markov process:

• (The substitution is independent from their past

history!).

• Meaning:
• Next mutation depends only on current state and is
independent of previous mutations.

• It is derived from global alignment. do you remember?

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What are PAM matrices ?

• Point accepted mutation matrix known as a PAM.

• It is also called Percent Accepted Mutation.

• Dayhoff and colleagues defined the PAM1 matrix as that which

produces 1 accepted point mutation per 100 amino acid residues.

• PAM matrix is designed to compare two sequences which are a

specific number of PAM units apart.

• [Link]

• [Link]

What are the different types of PAM?

• By Dayhoff meaning, a PAM0 matrix is the identity matrix, so that no

amino acid can change.

• Since the PAM1 matrix was based on closely related protein sequences
that share more than 85 % sequence identity, its use is limited for the
protein sequences that are less than 85 % identical.

• For this, other types of PAM matrices were derived from PAM1 matrix
by multiplying PAM1 by itself.

• PAM100 matrix was derived by multiplying PAM1 by itself 100 times.

• Similarly, the PAM250 matrix is used for proteins that share about 20 %
sequence identity

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What are based on? PAM matrices are based on a simple

evolutionary model

The divarge GAATC GAGTT

The original GA(A/G)T(C/T) Two changes

Ancestral sequence?

• Only mutations are allowed

• Sites evolve independently
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Is the replacement of amino acids with other accepted always?

• The replacement of an amino acid by another with similar

biochemical properties is sometimes accepted in a protein.

• These replacements are known as conservative

substitutions.

• For example, replacement of serine with threonine,

glutamic acid with aspartic acid, and isoleucine with valine
are some of the most common amino acid substitutions that
are readily accepted.

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Explain the PAM unit?

• 1PAM – Unit for measuring the similarity of two amino acid sequences.

• We say two sequences are n PAMs apart if every 100 residues contain,
on average, n actual changes (including multiple substitutions) between
them.

• A 100% PAM will have 100% variation in the sequence because the
same site can be changed more than one time.

• A PAM unit is the amount of evolution that will on average change 1%

of the amino acids within a protein sequence.

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What do you get from this graph?

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How to explain the graph?

• To understand the graph:

• We have a figure in which the sequence variance against

PAM distance to compare.

• If we do not know the idea, then we can think that a PAM

distance of 100 will mean a 100 % change on the seq. But
that is not the case.

• Because on a site, mutation may further mutated and

thereby get and accumulate multiple mutations.

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If you go further !!!

• Then therefore the experimental data show that if you have a 100 PAM distance,
only 55-60 % sites of the protein are actually mutated.
• So, if you go further, the PAM distance may increase to over 300 for an 85%
variations

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How to get PAM250

• PAM250 corresponds to 20% amino acid identity, represents 250 mutations
per 100 residues.
• If you times (multiply) PAM1 by itself 250 times you will get substitution
matrix like this:

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Are PAM used in BLAST?

• PAM matrices are also used as a scoring matrix when

comparing DNA sequences or protein sequences to judge
the quality of the alignment.

• This form of scoring system is utilized by a wide range of

alignment software including BLAST.

• [Link]

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How can different amino acids change the scoring?

• different amino acids are partially match in chemicals properties.

• So, if you assume 1 for match and 0 for mis-match, then that is not
enough.

• Because it depends on the side chain of the amino acid which may not
change the function (like Glu and Asp) etc.

• See the difference:

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