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ramachandran plot structure validation

by Maximillia Hyatt Published 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago

The local validation criteria, such as deviations from ideal bond length and bonding angles, Ramachandran plot outliers and clashing contacts, are a standard part of structure analysis before structure deposition, whereas the global and regional packing may not yet have been addressed.

The Ramachandran plot has been the mainstay of protein structure validation for many years. Its detailed structure has been continually analysed and refined as more and more experimentally determined models of protein 3D structures have become available, particularly at high and ultra-high resolution.

Full Answer

What is the Ramachandran plot validation server?

This server analyses the Ramachandran plot of a PDB file and compares it with the Ramachandran plots of about 400 representative structures solved at high resolution. See our validation related articles for more background details regarding the validation servers.

What determines the quality of a Ramachandran plot?

Determines the quality of a Ramachandran plot. The Ramachandran plot is probably the very best indicator of the quality of the experimental determination of three dimesional protein coordinates.

How can Ramachandran validation of protein structures be performed?

Ramachandran validation of protein structures is commonly performed using developments, such as MolProbity. We suggest tailoring such analyses by position-wise, geometry-specific steric-maps, which show (φ,ψ) regions with steric-clash at every residue position.

Where are the allowed values on a Ramachandran plot generated from PCNA?

For instance, the small strip of allowed values along the lower-left edge of the plot are a continuation of the large, extended-chain region at upper left. A Ramachandran plot generated from human PCNA, a trimeric DNA clamp protein that contains both β-sheet and α-helix ( PDB ID 1AXC).

What is Ramachandran plot how it is involved in protein structure validation?

The φ/ψ plot of the amino acid residues in a peptide is called the Ramachandran plot. It involves plotting the φ values on the x-axis and the ψ values on the y-axis to predict the possible conformation of the peptide. The angle spectrum in each axis is from −180° to +180°.

Which method is used to check the validity of protein structure?

Currently, the main techniques used to determine protein 3D structure are X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). In X-ray crystallography the protein is crystallized and then using X-ray diffraction the structure of protein is determined.

What does a Ramachandran plot tell you?

A Ramachandran plot is a way to visualize backbone dihedral angles ψ against φ of amino acid residues in protein structure. A Ramachandran plot can be used in two somewhat different ways. One is to show in theory which values, or conformations, of the ψ and φ angles are possible for an amino-acid residue in a protein.

Do Ramachandran plots show tertiary structure?

3:297:1718.08 Ramachandran Plots and Tertiary Structure - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipUsing the Ramachandran plot the next level up involves combining the secondary structures intoMoreUsing the Ramachandran plot the next level up involves combining the secondary structures into recurring elements called tertiary structures. And these are more commonly known as domains.

How do you validate a structure?

The validation has three aspects: 1) checking on the validity of the thousands to millions of measurements in the experiment; 2) checking how consistent the atomic model is with those experimental data; and 3) checking consistency of the model with known physical and chemical properties.

What is used to validate predicted and experimentally derived protein structure?

On the structure side, X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy are currently the two major experimental techniques for protein structure determination.

What are the principles underlying the formation of the Ramachandran plot?

Answer : The Ramachandran principle says that alpha helices, beta strands and turns are the most likely conformations for a polypeptide chain to adopt because most other conformations are impossible due to steric collisions between atoms.

Which is correct regarding the peptides in the Ramachandran plot?

Peptides that are unstructured will have all the backbone dihedral angles in the. disallowed regions.

What are allowed and disallowed regions in Ramachandran plot?

The 3(10) helix occurs close to the upper right of the alpha-helical region and is on the edge of allowed region indicating lower stability. Disallowed regions generally involve steric hindrance between the side chain C-beta methylene group and main chain atoms.

How does Ramachandran plot helps in determination of secondary structure of protein?

The Ramachandran plot provides a way to view the distribution of torsion angles in a protein structure and shows that the torsion angles corresponding to the two major secondary structure elements (α-helices and β-sheets) are clearly clustered within separate regions.

How is tertiary structure maintained?

Tertiary structure is stabilized by multiple interactions, specifically side chain functional groups which involve hydrogen bonds, salt bridges, covalent disulfide bonds, and hydrophobic interactions.

What is Ramachandran Favoured?

The Ramachandran plot analysis (Figure S1) show that 94.3% of the residues lie within the most favored region, 5.7% of the residues within additional allowed region and no residues with in generously allowed region and disallowed region.

What is Ramachandran plot?

The Ramachandran plot visualizes energetically allowed and forbidden regions for the dihedral angles. For poor quality homology models, many dihedral angles are found in the forbidden regions of the Ramachandran plot. Such deviations usually indicate problems with the structure.

What is the validation process of a protein model?

The validation process includes manual inspection of the protein model to ensure that the model supports any experimental data. This often entails superimposing the model with the template structures for comparison. Software such as the SUPERPOSE module of the CCP4 ( Collaborative Computational Project 1994) suite of crystallography programs, and Swiss-PDB Viewer perform structural alignments of the model with other similar structures, such as the templates. Commercial homology modelling programs often include their own model evaluation software i.e. ProTable in SYBYL (Clark et al. 1989). The quality of the superposition process is generally measured by a root mean square deviation (RMSD) value, which is the sum of the squared distance between each corresponding Cα atom position in the two structures following superposition. The core Cα atoms of protein models which share 35-50% sequence identity with their templates, will generally deviate by 1.0-1.5 Å from their experimental counter parts ( Chothia and Lesk 1986; Peitsch 2002). Manual inspection and manipulation of the model can be performed using molecular graphics software such as O (Jones et al 1999), Swiss-PDB Viewer ( Guex and Peitsch 1997) and Pymol ( DeLano 2002 ). Manual manipulation and visualisation are one of the most important steps to determine the accuracy of the model and to check if the model matches observed experimental data. This process may include altering side-chain rotamers to match a template structure or employing docking programs such as AUTODOCK ( Morris et al, 1998 ), ICM-Dock ( Abagyan et al. 1997) or GOLD ( Verdonk et al. 2003) to dock known substrates into the active site or known protein-binding molecules to the surface of the model.

What is the Ramachandran validation of protein structures?

Ramachandran validation of protein structures is commonly performed using developments, such as MolProbity. We suggest tailoring such analyses by position-wise, geometry-specific steric-maps, which show (φ,ψ) regions with steric-clash at every residue position. These maps are different from the classical steric-map because they are highly sensitive to bond length and angle values that are used, in our steric-maps, as observed in the residue positions in super-high-resolution peptide and protein structures. (φ,ψ) outliers observed in such structures seldom have steric-clash. Therefore, we propose that a (φ,ψ) outlier is unacceptable if it is located within the steric-clash region of a bond geometry-specific steric-map for a residue position. These steric-maps also suggest position-specific accessible (φ,ψ) space. The PARAMA web resource performs in-depth position-wise analysis of protein structures using bond geometry-specific steric-maps.

Who is the Indian soldier of science?

An Indian soldier of science who had implanted deep foot prints in the biophysical world of peptides, proteins and imaging is none other than G.N. Ramachandran. Hardly has another Indian biophysicist received such world wide acclaim. The year 2013 marked the 50th year of his much lauded and used Ramachandran map and has been celebrated in India with gusto, worthy of his remarkable contribution. As the year passed by, it is imperative that we salute the great soul yet again. It is no mere coincidence with respect to G.N. Ramachandran that after the year long celebrations of 2013, the year 2014 will be celebrated world-wide as the International Year of Crystallography. It is essential to emphasize that any celebration with respect to crystallography is incomplete without remembering Ramachandran. His life and contributions are now widely known, but a recount of the tales will always remain relevant, and the budding generation of young scientists must realize his value over and over again.

When was the Ramachandran plot first calculated?

The first Ramachandran plot was calculated just after the first protein structure at atomic resolution was determined ( myoglobin, in 1960 ), although the conclusions were based on small-molecule crystallography of short peptides.

What is the angle of a Ramachandran plot?

All three angles are at 180° in the conformation shown. In biochemistry, a Ramachandran plot (also known as a Rama plot, a Ramachandran diagram or a [φ,ψ] plot ), originally developed in 1963 by G. N. Ramachandran, C. Ramakrishnan, and V. Sasisekharan, is a way to visualize energetically allowed regions for backbone dihedral angles ψ against φ ...

Abstract

Validation of three-dimensional structures is at the core of structural determination methods.

Introduction

Insight into the three-dimensional structures of macromolecules resolved to atomic detail is crucial for our understanding of biological processes.

Results

We analysed more than 50,000 residue networks and evaluated the dependence of node degree (ND) on (i) resolution and (ii) residue network size. The ND parameter indicates how an average node is connected to the other nodes. The distribution of ND clearly shows that ND does not depend on resolution (Fig.

Discussion

These examples demonstrate that the complex network analysis of a residue-based network is a useful tool for regional and global validation of three-dimensional macromolecular models.

Methods

Node degree and clustering coefficient against protein size and resolution was analysed using 50,249 residue networks. Residue network data were retrieved from the Protein Graph Repository 42 ( http://wjdi.bioinfo.uqam.ca/ ). By transformation of the three-dimensional protein models into the 2D graphs, each amino acid is abstracted as a Cα atom.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Structural Biology grant P1-0048, Infrastructure program grant I0-0035-2790 and an Infrastructural grant of the Centre of Excellence, CIPKEBIP, provided by the Slovenian Research Agency.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Overview

Uses

A Ramachandran plot can be used in two somewhat different ways. One is to show in theory which values, or conformations, of the ψ and φ angles are possible for an amino-acid residue in a protein (as at top right). A second is to show the empirical distribution of datapoints observed in a single structure (as at right, here) in usage for structure validation, or else in a database of many structures (as in the lower 3 plots at left). Either case is usually shown against outlines for the th…

Amino-acid preferences

One might expect that larger side chains would result in more restrictions and consequently a smaller allowable region in the Ramachandran plot, but the effect of side chains is small. In practice, the major effect seen is that of the presence or absence of the methylene group at Cβ. Glycine has only a hydrogen atom for its side chain, with a much smaller van der Waals radius than the CH3, CH2, or CH group that starts the side chain of all other amino acids. Hence it is least re…

More recent updates

The first Ramachandran plot was calculated just after the first protein structure at atomic resolution was determined (myoglobin, in 1960 ), although the conclusions were based on small-molecule crystallography of short peptides. Now, many decades later, there are tens of thousands of high-resolution protein structures determined by X-ray crystallography and deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Many studies have taken advantage of this data to produce more detai…

Related conventions

One can also plot the dihedral angles in polysaccharides (e.g. with CARP).

Gallery

• Ramachandran plot for the general case; data from Lovell 2003
• Ramachandran plot for Glycine
• Ramachandran plot for Proline
• Ramachandran plot for pre-Proline

Software

• Web-based Structural Analysis tool for any uploaded PDB file, producing Ramachandran plots, computing dihedral angles and extracting sequence from PDB
• Web-based tool showing Ramachandran plot of any PDB entry
• MolProbity web service that produces Ramachandran plots and other validation of any PDB-format file

Further reading

• Richardson, J.S. (1981). "The Anatomy and Taxonomy of Protein Structure". Anatomy and Taxonomy of Protein Structures. Advances in Protein Chemistry. Vol. 34. pp. 167–339. doi:10.1016/S0065-3233(08)60520-3. ISBN 9780120342341. PMID 7020376., available on-line at Anatax
• Branden, C.-I.; Tooze, J. (1991), Introduction to Protein Structure, Garland Publishing, NY, ISBN 0-8153-0344-0

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