Calculate relative evolutionary rate with the help of this tool. McRate is a program for detecting conserved amino-acid sites by computing the relative evolutionary rate for each site in the multiple sequence alignment (MSA). In contrast to other existing programs McRate considers all possible phylogenetic scenarios among the sequences under study, rather than relying on a single best tree.

The degree to which an amino-acid site is free to vary is strongly dependent on its structural and functional importance. An amino acid that plays an essential role, such as one within the active site of the protein, is unlikely to change over evolutionary time. Hence, the evolutionary rate at an amino-acid site is indicative of how conserved this site is, and in turn, allows evaluating the importance of this site in maintaining the structure or function of the protein. McRate calculates the relative evolutionary rate at each site using a probabilistic-based evolutionary model. This allows taking into account the stochastic process underlying sequence evolution within protein families. Most importantly, McRate uses Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methodology to integrate over the space of all possible trees. Hence, McRate does not assume a pre-existing phylogenetic tree under which the sequences relate. McRate was found to be superior over na?ve methods that rely on a single tree only.

The license of this software is Freeware, you can free download and free use this calculator software.