Blossum62 error – Never stop questioning

Posted on March 28, 2008
Filed Under Science | Leave a Comment

Outch! Styczynski et al. [1] found an error in the BLOSSUM62 – THE substitution matrix used since 16 years in bioinformatics for protein database searches.

Lessons learned:

• Don’t stop questioning even fundamental laws/tools/assumptions/etc.
• Transparency – in bioinformatics the access to the source code and the data – is essential for proper science

[Via Suicyte Notes]

[1] BLOSUM62 miscalculations improve search performance. Styczynski MP, Jensen KL, Rigoutsos I, Stephanopoulos G Nat Biotechnol. 2008 Mar ; 26(3): 274-5

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