Andrews L C, Harrison R W
Crystallography Laboratory, NCI-Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, Maryland 21701.
Proteins. 1991;10(2):162-70. doi: 10.1002/prot.340100210.
Macromolecules are elastic bodies. Atomic structures are available for nucleic acids and proteins in two or more different conformations. It is a common practice to compare two structures by finding the best rigid body superposition of the molecules. This ignores possible deformations. There is useful information in the deviations from the rigid body superposition. If the deviations are considered to be elastic deformations of a common structure than it is possible to extract this information. Results are shown for comparisons of deoxyhemoglobin versus carbonmonoxyhemoglobin and for two different conformations of catabolite gene activator protein.
大分子是弹性体。核酸和蛋白质的原子结构存在两种或更多不同的构象。通过找到分子的最佳刚体叠加来比较两种结构是一种常见的做法。这忽略了可能的变形。刚体叠加的偏差中存在有用信息。如果将这些偏差视为共同结构的弹性变形，那么就有可能提取这些信息。文中展示了脱氧血红蛋白与一氧化碳血红蛋白比较的结果，以及分解代谢基因激活蛋白两种不同构象比较的结果。
