Dali server: conservation mapping in 3D

Our web site (http://ekhidna.biocenter.helsinki.fi/dali_server) runs the Dali program for protein structure comparison. The web site consists of three parts: (i) the Dali server compares newly solved structures against structures in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), (ii) the Dali database allows browsing precomputed structural neighbourhoods and (iii) the pairwise comparison generates suboptimal alignments for a pair of structures. Each part has its own query form and a common format for the results page. The inputs are either PDB identifiers or novel structures uploaded by the user. The results pages are hyperlinked to aid interactive analysis. The web interface is simple and easy to use. The key purpose of interactive analysis is to check whether conserved residues line up in multiple structural alignments and how conserved residues and ligands cluster together in multiple structure superimpositions. In favourable cases, protein structure comparison can lead to evolutionary discoveries not detected by sequence analysis.