database search results

[Chuck Staben]

Database searches are very difficult to interpret-and I find homology (similarity) figures in papers frequently border on the unbelievable, but give no indicators of confidence, even statistical.  In response to the post by brett, the P-values are an indicator of the likelihood that the score of the match could differ from an expected score.  Low P-values indicate clear similarity, high p-values are dubious.  I find that some matches of real biological significance have p-values as low as 0.3 (BLAST searc
es).  Lower values might be signifcant, but I doubt it.  Some higher values are probably not significant.