Recognition of functional regions in primary structures using a set of property patterns.

32 consensus patterns for a set of functional regions and structural motifs in protein sequences were constructed. The pattern definition is heuristic and based on 11 selected steric and physicochemical properties. By comparison with these patterns, it was possible to identify, without false detection, 1532 sites in 8702 protein sequences of SWISSPROT. Screening against such a pattern library offers a considerable chance to identify functional regions or structural motifs in proteins from which only the sequence is known.