Summary: We present an algorithmic tool for the identification of biologically significant amino acids in proteins of known three dimensional structure. We estimate the degree of purifying selection and positive Darwinian selection at each site and project these estimates onto the molecular surface of the protein. Thus, patches of functional residues (undergoing either positive or purifying selection), which may be discontinuous in the linear sequence, are revealed. We test for the statistical significance of the site-specific scores in order to obtain reliable and valid estimates.

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Supplementary information: More information is available at http://selecton.bioinfo.tau.ac.il/overview.html. A set of examples is available at http://selecton.bioinfo.tau.ac.il/gallery.html