ABSTRACT
There is a large branch of modern biochemistry that is entirely computational. So-called “dry biochemistry” is as important a tool in the biochemist’s kit as any “wet lab” technique. Because the field of computational biochemistry requires years of mastery, this lab is only intended to give an idea of the most basic kind of work that can be done. True masters can map the sequence of a protein with unknown structure onto the known structure of a related protein, and predict the structure of the unknown one. Globins are fairly small proteins that are very rich in alpha helical structures. Calculating the scores of two protein sequences may be quite complicated and difficult to do, but having done that, calculating the evolutionary distance is not difficult at all. Any two sequences of proteins can be aligned, whether they are certainly related or not. A sequence can even be scored against itself, and usually is, as a reference value.
