Editing Consensus sequence (section)

{{Short description|Most common variant of a genetic sequence across samples}}{{Technical|date=May 2023}}

In [[molecular biology]] and [[bioinformatics]], the '''consensus sequence''' (or '''canonical sequence''') is the calculated sequence of most frequent residues, either [[nucleotide]] or [[amino acid]], found at each position in a [[sequence alignment]]. It represents the results of multiple [[sequence alignment]]s in which related sequences are compared to each other and similar [[sequence motifs]] are calculated. Such information is important when considering sequence-dependent enzymes such as [[RNA polymerase]].<ref>Pierce, Benjamin A. 2002. Genetics : A Conceptual Approach. 1st ed. New York: W.H. Freeman and Co.</ref>