allow glycine CAs to be shown with ribbon

[Tristan Croll]

At the moment, when both ribbon and atoms are shown (with backbone suppressed), the CA atom is shown for all protein residues other than glycine. I would like to be able to show the glycine CA as well (without necessarily having to turn off backbone suppression altogether). The reason for this is my live Ramachandran validator, which I've re-worked into a semi-standalone thing (create one for a given structure and it will add itself as a child model, performing a Ramachandran validation and coloring C-alphas every time coordinates change). It works nicely alongside the ribbon, except for the fact that I can't see the glycine CAs (see image).

[Conrad Huang]

The current rule is that backbone atoms (when suppressed) are only displayed if a bonded non-backbone atom is displayed. Of course, this means GLY CA atoms are never displayed because they are only connected to other backbone atoms. Can you think of a different rule that will display the GLY CAs at the appropriate time? I would be reluctant to add another atom/residue attribute just for this case, unless you can suggest other scenarios where this behavior is desirable.

[tic20@…]

Actually, since this time I’ve gone ahead and reworked my Ramachandran validator to create its own separate drawing with spheres that overlay the CAs. Means this isn’t a problem for me any more, and works much faster to boot (since updating the colours doesn’t trigger a redraw of the whole molecule). So feel free to close this.

 
 
Tristan Croll
Research Fellow
Cambridge Institute for Medical Research
University of Cambridge CB2 0XY