With the huge increase of protein data, an important problem is to estimate, within a large protein family, the number of sensible subsets for subsequent in-depth structural, functional, and evolutionary analyses. To tackle this problem, Secator implements the principle of an ascending hierarchical method using a distance matrix based on a multiple alignment of protein sequences. Dissimilarity values assigned to the nodes of a deduced phylogenetic tree are partitioned by a new stopping rule introduced to automatically determine the significant dissimilarity values.

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