Cattell, K.Koop, B.Olafson, R.S.Fellows, M.Bailey, I.Olafson, R.W.Upton, C.2015-07-222015-07-2219961996-12Cattrel, K. et al. 1996. Approaches to Detection of Distantly Related Proteins by Database Searches. BioTechniques vol. 21, pp. 1118-1125.http://www.biotechniques.com/multimedia/archive/00010/96216bc03_10361a.pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/6358The searching of protein databases as a method of identifying newly sequenced genes is commonplace in molecular biology laboratories. However, it is a procedure that is not usually formally taught to students, and method cookbooks discuss it only briefly. This article uses a single family of highly diverged uracil-DNA glycosylases, which fall into two distinct groups, to highlight some of the difficulties associated with identification of such proteins by database searching.enArticleDepartment of Biology