[civilized]

If the mutations were non-synonymous, resulting in different amino acids, the fact that they keep the natural function is still kinda cool. Very much a pure research result AFAICT, but worth a little something.

[flobosg]

This is already a well known fact: protein structure (and consequently function) is much more conserved than sequence, mostly due to biophysical constraints.

[civilized]

Forgive my ignorance - is that true even for non-synonymous mutations? They usually have a hard time disrupting the big structure?

[dekhn]

It's fairly common for two proteins to have almost identical structures but different (down to 30% or lower sequence identify) and it's also possible to mess up a nice protein that folds easily with a single amino acid change.

Depends entirely on the context and details.