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Sampling more rotamers at "hot" spots

Why do we need "hot" spots?

In some cases, we are insterested in what's going on in some particular sites rather than the whole structure. MCCE provides a mechanism to define these spots and sample more rotamers subsequently. These sites are called "hot" spots. 

How do we do it?

The machanism is to define a hot spot file named "list_rot.gold" in the working directory. Hot spots are at residue level. One can put any one "ATOM" line of the hot residue in the original pdb file to list_rot.gold. The step 1 of mcce will use list_rot.gold to generate a rotamer making instruction file template head1.lst, then step 2 is able to use this head1.lst to make rotamers.

A working Example

Prepare the working directory

mkdir 4lzt
cd 4lzt
getpdb 4lzt

This should give you a pdb file 4lzt.pdb. We will use continuum water, so remove explicit water molecules:

grep -v HOH 4lzt.pdb > 4lzt_noHOH.pdb

Prepare list_rot.gold file

We know the the enzymatic fuction of lysozymen comes from active sites GLU35 and ASP52, so we will treat these two residues as hot spots. Pick an atom record from each of these two residues and put them in file list_rot.gold.