Proteins often contain several modules or domains, each with a distinct evolutionary origin and function.
Computational biologists define conserved domains based on recurring sequence patterns or motifs.
The source databases also provide descriptions and links to citations. Since conserved domains correspond to compact structural units, CDs contain links to 3D-structure via Cn3D whenever possible. The query sequence is compared to a position-specific score matrix prepared from the underlying conserved domain alignment. Hits may be displayed as a pairwise alignment of the query sequence with a representative domain sequence, or as a multiple alignment. Run DART, the Domain Architecture Retrieval Tool to search for proteins with similar domain architectures.