This project focuses on comparing the p53 tumor suppressor protein across different species to understand how it has evolved over time. Since p53 plays an important role in controlling cell division and preventing cancer, studying its conservation gives useful biological insights.

• UniProt (for sequence retrieval)
• Clustal Omega (for multiple sequence alignment)
• MEGA (for phylogenetic tree construction)

The following organisms were used for comparison:

• Human
• Elephant
• Bat
• Chicken
• Frog
• Zebrafish
• Fruit fly

These were chosen to represent both closely related and distantly related species.

First, protein sequences of p53 were downloaded from UniProt in FASTA format.
These sequences were then aligned using Clustal Omega to identify similarities and differences.
Finally, the aligned sequences were imported into MEGA software, where a phylogenetic tree was constructed using the Neighbor-Joining method.

The phylogenetic tree shows that mammals (human, elephant, bat) are more closely related to each other in terms of p53 sequence.
Non-mammalian species like fish and frog show more variation, while fruit fly is the most distant, indicating greater evolutionary divergence.

The study confirms that the p53 protein is highly conserved among mammals, which highlights its critical biological function. At the same time, variations in distant species reflect evolutionary adaptation.

Mammalian p53 sequences show high similarity, while distant species like Drosophila exhibit significant divergence, highlighting evolutionary conservation of tumor suppression mechanisms.

Aashitosh More Msc. Bionformatics Student