Bioinformatics explained: Scoring matrices

Biological sequences have evolved throughout time and evolution has shown that not all changes to a biological sequence is equally likely to happen. Certain amino acid substitutions (change of one amino acid to another) happen often, whereas other substitutions are very rare. For instance, tryptophan (W) which is a relatively rare amino acid, will only -- on very rare occasions -- mutate into a leucine (L).

  A R N D C Q E G H I L K M F P S T W Y V
A 4 -1 -2 -2 0 -1 -1 0 -2 -1 -1 -1 -1 -2 -1 1 0 -3 -2 0
R -1 5 0 -2 -3 1 0 -2 0 -3 -2 2 -1 -3 -2 -1 -1 -3 -2 -3
N -2 0 6 1 -3 0 0 0 1 -3 -3 0 -2 -3 -2 1 0 -4 -2 -3
D -2 -2 1 6 -3 0 2 -1 -1 -3 -4 -1 -3 -3 -1 0 -1 -4 -3 -3
C 0 -3 -3 -3 9 -3 -4 -3 -3 -1 -1 -3 -1 -2 -3 -1 -1 -2 -2 -1
Q -1 1 0 0 -3 5 2 -2 0 -3 -2 1 0 -3 -1 0 -1 -2 -1 -2
E -1 0 0 2 -4 2 5 -2 0 -3 -3 1 -2 -3 -1 0 -1 -3 -2 -2
G 0 -2 0 -1 -3 -2 -2 6 -2 -4 -4 -2 -3 -3 -2 0 -2 -2 -3 -3
H -2 0 1 -1 -3 0 0 -2 8 -3 -3 -1 -2 -1 -2 -1 -2 -2 2 -3
I -1 -3 -3 -3 -1 -3 -3 -4 -3 4 2 -3 1 0 -3 -2 -1 -3 -1 3
L -1 -2 -3 -4 -1 -2 -3 -4 -3 2 4 -2 2 0 -3 -2 -1 -2 -1 1
K -1 2 0 -1 -3 1 1 -2 -1 -3 -2 5 -1 -3 -1 0 -1 -3 -2 -2
M -1 -1 -2 -3 -1 0 -2 -3 -2 1 2 -1 5 0 -2 -1 -1 -1 -1 1
F -2 -3 -3 -3 -2 -3 -3 -3 -1 0 0 -3 0 6 -4 -2 -2 1 3 -1
P -1 -2 -2 -1 -3 -1 -1 -2 -2 -3 -3 -1 -2 -4 7 -1 -1 -4 -3 -2
S 1 -1 1 0 -1 0 0 0 -1 -2 -2 0 -1 -2 -1 4 1 -3 -2 -2
T 0 -1 0 -1 -1 -1 -1 -2 -2 -1 -1 -1 -1 -2 -1 1 5 -2 -2 0
W -3 -3 -4 -4 -2 -2 -3 -2 -2 -3 -2 -3 -1 1 -4 -3 -2 11 2 -3
Y -2 -2 -2 -3 -2 -1 -2 -3 2 -1 -1 -2 -1 3 -3 -2 -2 2 7 -1
V 0 -3 -3 -3 -1 -2 -2 -3 -3 3 1 -2 1 -1 -2 -2 0 -3 -1 4

Based on evolution of proteins it became apparent that these changes or substitutions of amino acids can be modeled by a scoring matrix also refereed to as a substitution matrix. See an example of a scoring matrix in the table above. This matrix lists the substitution scores of every single amino acid. A score for an aligned amino acid pair is found at the intersection of the corresponding column and row. For example, the substitution score from an arginine (R) to a lysine (K) is 2. The diagonal show scores for amino acids which have not changed. Most substitutions changes have a negative score. Only rounded numbers are found in this matrix.

The two most used matrices are the BLOSUM [Henikoff and Henikoff, 1992] and PAM [Dayhoff and Schwartz, 1978].

Different scoring matrices

Use of scoring matrices

Deciding which scoring matrix you should use in order of obtain the best alignment results is a difficult task. If you have no prior knowledge on the sequence the BLOSUM62 is probably the best choice. This matrix has become the de facto standard for scoring matrices and is also used as the default matrix in BLAST searches. The selection of a "wrong" scoring matrix will most probable strongly influence on the outcome of the analysis. In general a few rules apply to the selection of scoring matrices.

The BLOSUM matrices with low numbers correspond to PAM matrices with high numbers. (See figure 18.14) for correlations between the PAM and BLOSUM matrices. To summarize, if you want to find distant related proteins to a sequence of interest using BLAST, you could benefit of using BLOSUM45 or similar matrices.

Image pam-blosum
Figure 18.14: Relationship between scoring matrices. The BLOSUM62 has become a de facto standard scoring matrix for a wide range of alignment programs. It is the default matrix in BLAST.

Other useful resources

BLOKS database
http://blocks.fhcrc.org/

NCBI help site
http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Web&PAGE_TYPE=BlastDocs