Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 26, 2026

An Integrated Approach for Microprotein Identification and Sequence Analysis
Published on: July 12, 2022
morFeus: a web-based program to detect remotely conserved orthologs using symmetrical best hits and orthology network
Ines Wagner, Michael Volkmer, Malvika Sharan
1Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Am Klopferspitz 18, Martinsried 82152, Germany. habermann@biochem.mpg.de.
Background:
Searching the orthologs of a given protein or DNA sequence is one of the most important and most commonly used Bioinformatics methods in Biology. Programs like BLAST or the orthology search engine Inparanoid can be used to find orthologs when the similarity between two sequences is sufficiently high. They however fail when the level of conservation is low. The detection of remotely conserved proteins oftentimes involves sophisticated manual intervention that is difficult to automate.
Results:
Here, we introduce morFeus, a search program to find remotely conserved orthologs. Based on relaxed sequence similarity searches, morFeus selects sequences based on the similarity of their alignments to the query, tests for orthology by iterative reciprocal BLAST searches and calculates a network score for the resulting network of orthologs that is a measure of orthology independent of the E-value. Detecting remotely conserved orthologs of a protein using morFeus thus requires no manual intervention. We demonstrate the performance of morFeus by comparing it to state-of-the-art orthology resources and methods. We provide an example of remotely conserved orthologs, which were experimentally shown to be functionally equivalent in the respective organisms and therefore meet the criteria of the orthology-function conjecture.
Conclusions:
Based on our results, we conclude that morFeus is a powerful and specific search method for detecting remotely conserved orthologs. morFeus is freely available at http://bio.biochem.mpg.de/morfeus/. Its source code is available from Sourceforge.net (https://sourceforge.net/p/morfeus/).
More Related Videos
09:37Navigating MARRVEL, a Web-Based Tool that Integrates Human Genomics and Model Organism Genetics Information
Published on: August 15, 2019
10:40Comprehensive Workflow for the Genome-wide Identification and Expression Meta-analysis of the ATL E3 Ubiquitin Ligase Gene Family in Grapevine
Published on: December 22, 2017
Related Concept Videos
Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons
Multi-species Conserved Sequences
Although the genome of each species varies greatly from each other, a few sequences are highly conserved. Such conserved...
Conservation of Protein Domains Over Different Proteins
A limited set of protein domains often duplicate and recombine during evolution. These domains can be organized in different combinations to...
Conserved Binding Sites
Binding sites are often located in large pockets, and if their location on a protein’s surface is unknown, it can be predicted using various approaches. The energetic method computationally...
Conservation of Protein Domains