Question

The secondary structure prediction methods can be either ab initio based, which make use of single sequence information only, or homology based, which makes use of multiple sequence alignment information.

(a) True

(b) False

I have been asked this question during a job interview.

Query is from Protein Secondary Structure Prediction  for Globular Proteins in division Secondary Structure Prediction of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

The correct choice is (a) True

To explain I would say: The ab initio methods, which belong to early generation methods, predict secondary structures based on statistical calculations of the residues of a single query sequence. The homology-based methods do not rely on statistics of residues of a single sequence, but on common secondary structural patterns conserved among multiple homologous sequences.