A survey of orphan enzyme activities

BMC Bioinformatics

Table 2 Summary of survey results

	Number	Proportion
Total number of putative orphans	1,356
Number required to achieve 95% significance	180	13.3%
Number orphans evaluated	228	16.8%
Out of 228 orphans:
Number of artifactual orphans	41	18.0%
Number of valid orphans	187	82.0%
Max. number of salvageable orphans (all rankings)	57	25.0%
Out of 57 salvageable orphans:	Number	Proportion
Excellent	9	15.8%
Good	23	40.4%
Marginal	9	15.8%
Poor	16	28.1%
Bacterial salvageable orphans	26	45.6%
Eukaryotic salvageable orphans	31	54.4%

The survey was designed to achieve a maximum sampling error of 5%, 19 times out of 20. This corresponds to a minimum sample size of ~80 orphans. A total of 228 orphans were in fact surveyed. In a number of cases more than one instance of an orphan activity was evaluated because the activity was reported in more than one species. Consequently, 286 instances were evaluated.

ISSN: 1471-2105