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Re: aniso scaling



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There's nothing wrong with high B-factors in a structure.  In fact, if they're
not high when your resolution is not brilliant, Be Afraid.  Your model has to
describe the data, and B-factors are part of the model, indicating
uncertainty.  If your data implies high B-factors, then that's what your model
should have.  In fact, if you try to force the B-factors to remain low by some
artificial means, you're creating an inaccurate model.  The B-factor is no
indication of the accuracy of a model.

Of course, if you start off refinement with B-factors far from the right
values, they're going to have trouble converging properly, so resetting them to
a more realistic value (from the Wilson plot, for instance) before refining
them would possibly sort out your funny B distribution.  But even that need not
be a problem:  if it makes sense in terms of the structure (maybe a buried side
chain coming from an exposed main chain?) then that's what it should be.

Phraenquex


> Dear All,
>
> I am refining a structure at 2.3 A resolution. I have a tetramer in the
> asymmetric unit. I am using STRICT NCS and group B's (2 per residue: main
> chain atoms and side chains atoms).
> I always start a refinement using XPLOR and I finish it with REFMAC because
> I find it easier to manipulate alternate conformations (that won't happen in
> this case!!) but also because the anisotropic scaling seems to work better.
> Is it?
>
> The scaling in XPLOR gives:
>
> SCALEF: k=    0.170  B11=  -1.221 B22=  18.857 B33=   7.993 B12=   0.000
> B13= -10.499 B23=   0.000
>
> It sure looks like it needs some aniso scaling.
>
> That makes my R and Rfree drop almost 4% each after bulksolvent correction,
> powell minimization and some B refinement.  However, in XPLOR I noticed that
> after the anisotropic scaling my B's go up and up and up (before average B
> is 28 and after scaling, it's 40!!!!! And it continues to go up after each
> cycle). The problem is I don't know what is going on with those B and I
> don't have any confidence in them. They also don't make any sense. Some of
> the main chain atoms will have B's higher than the side chain atoms in the
> same residue.
> This happens not only for this structure but for all of the one I work on.
> It is also obvious when you retrieve some of the pdb files in the Data Bank.
> Am I the only one worried about it?
>
> Can someone shed some light on that matter please?
>
> Here are statistics from Moleman for before and after some refinement.
>
> Before:
>
> powell16c               R = 0.306181  FREE-R = 0.320428         15-2.3 A
> with 2.0 sigma cutoff
>         ====================================================================
>          Chain name      Atoms       Bave       Bsdv       Bmin       Bmax
>             <->A1          942      28.61      10.36      13.20      73.83
>             <->A2          804      32.89      10.33      14.71      65.89
>             <->AL           23      32.05       2.54      27.81      38.12
>             <->AM            1      35.18    1237.63      35.18      35.18
>             <->AW           15      34.38       0.00      34.38      34.38
>         ====================================================================
>
> After:
>
> powell17c       R = 0.26149  FREE-R = 0.283608          aniso scaling 15-2.3
> A with 2.0 sigma cutoff
>         ====================================================================
>          Chain name      Atoms       Bave       Bsdv       Bmin       Bmax
>             <->A1          942      40.91      11.09      18.80      85.51
>             <->A2          804      45.33      10.73      22.57      82.86
>             <->AL           23      39.15       5.76      30.00      50.88
>             <->AM            1      46.41    2153.89      46.41      46.41
>             <->AW           15      46.80       0.01      46.80      46.80
>          Nr of chains encountered  : (          5)
>         ====================================================================
>
> I used the XTALMACRO:scalef in XPLOR.
>