The Board of Regents of the University of Texas

The Board of Regents of the University of Texas of Austin, Tex., has received US Patent No. 7,016,786, "Statistical methods for analyzing biological sequences." The patent claims statistical algorithms that can be used to identify evolutionarily conserved amino acid positions within a family of proteins, and to identify amino acid positions within a protein sequence. The algorithms may also be useful in the analysis of other polymer sequences such as polysaccharides, lipids, DNA, RNA, and, more specifically, in the analysis of DNA microarray data, the patent's abstract states.