Why do people still do "Genetic Analysis"? - Attn: Molecular biologists, geneticists, everyone else (Apr/03/2011 )

Hello Bioforum! It's been a long time since I last came by. I'm officially off lab work after I graduated last year. Still do some science-related reading every now and then.

I come across in some papers where people did a 'genetic analysis' of a gene where the results are protein alignments, conserved domain search and some tree diagrams. I'm not questioning their work here but I'm just wondering why would anyone do such analysis given that the genes (polyhydroxyalkanoate synthase) are not uncommon nor unknown.

Maybe I'm just dim that's why I couldn't draw any conclusion from what I read. Hmm...

Anyone?

They are known for a subset of organisms, but that does not infer their properties in different organisms. Sequence alignments etc. help to show those regions of a protein that are important for function, and those that may not be so important, and can help deduce the function of an unknown protein in a new organism.