[Chimera-users] B-Factor Difference Plot

[Elaine Meng]

Hi Amanda,
Visually comparing the putty models (worms in Chimera) between the two structures is not meaningful unless you are sure you mapped the same value to the same radius in both structures.  Even so, it is hard to see in this way.  

The more direct way is to just look at the PDB file in a text editor and see what the B-factor values are in the corresponding residues.  I don’t know how you are calculating the differences, but you would have to make sure your script or whatever is mathematically correct and that it is also correctly pairing the residues between the two structures.  I.e. the residue numbering might be different in the two structures.

Now, comparing all the atomic values is probably too hard, so you could use Chimera to output the average values per residue so that you have fewer numbers to compare.  In the Render by Attribute dialog (the same one used to make the worms display) you could choose File… Save Attributes and then choose to save the attribute of “residues” named “average->bfactor” to a file.  You would need to do this for each of the two structures.  So that it doesn’t include other stuff besides the protein,  you could use command “select protein” and then choose the option to “Restrict save to current selection” (or alternatively, delete all the stuff you don’t care about for this comparison like solvent before saving the values).
<http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/render/render.html>

Now, if you are sure your script is mathematically correct and also that the correct residues are paired between the two structures, then maybe your question is really how to compare B-factors between two structures when they seem to be on a different scale or systematically offset.  The question of whether or how best to normalize the values between different crystal structures is not a Chimera question per se, but a more general biophysical one to which I do not know the answer.

Best,
Elaine
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Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. 
UCSF Chimera(X) team
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco



> On Aug 28, 2017, at 9:00 AM, Amanda Evans Constantinides <aconstantinides1 at student.gsu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hello, 
> I am plotting the B-factor differences between two similar structures. I do not understand why the plot is almost entirely on the positive side of the X-axis. If I open B factor putty models in PYMOL and in Chimera, there are some visible areas that should translate to negative B-factor differences on a quantitative plot. There is no way one structure is entirely more flexible than the other. Can you help explain this to me? Is there away to adjust the zero point to more accurately reflect these differences on the plot? 
> Thank you, 
> Amanda Constantinides
> Graduate Research Assistant
> Georgia State University