Summary
Consensus sequences are less thermostable than ancestrally reconstructed sequences (1).
Details
Consensus sequences are generated using “a simple counting method” (most likely residue at each position). In the authors’ case, they used RNAse-H:
For RNase H, ancestral proteins Anc1 and AncA have relatively high Tm values of 76.7 and 69.7 °C, whereas the consensus proteins Anc1cons and AncAcons have low Tm values of 61.4 and 58.6 °C, and show broad urea-induced unfolding transitions.
Figures
Ref (1)
1.
Nixon C, Lim SA, Sternke M, Barrick D, Harms MJ, Marqusee S. The importance of input sequence set to consensus‐derived proteins and their relationship to reconstructed ancestral proteins. Protein Science. 2024;33(6). Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/pro.5011