Amino acid structure regularization (REFINE)

Introduction.

After working on atomic positions when building residues in density, or after making mutations that need manual intervention, you might end up in a situation where atomic bond lengths and bond angles are no longer reasonable. The refine options can help in this case.

There is crude refinement for pathological cases, and fine refinement for not to bad cases.

Crude refinement (CRUDE)

The command CRUDE will prompt you for a residue range. It will then very quickly but very crudely bring all bond lengths in this range between 1.3 and 1.75 Angstrom. No matter how bad they were initially. Bond lenghts of up to 1000 Angstrom can be fixed with this option. Its crudeness is proportional to the crudeness of the input structure. If there are gaps that are greater then 5 Angstrom, you might ocasionally end up R amino acids.

Fine refinement (REFI)

The command REFI activates the rather carefull regularisation. This option was rewritten in jan-96, and rather than doing a full matrix optimisation, it now works a bit more like an energy minimiser. You will be prompted for an amino acid range there are no restrictions to this range, except that all residues, drugs, etc., in thsi range should be present in the topology file. The refinement will proceed in NCYCS cycles of NITS iterations. The parameters relevant to this refinement can be set using the PARAMS command.

Setting refinement parameters (REFPAR)

The command REFPAR allows you to see or change the parameters needed by the REFI option. The following parameters can be changed:
NCYCS  Number of cycles.
NITS   Number of iterations per cycle.
SFT1   Cycle 1 will be stopped once the maximal atomic shift is 
       smaller than this parameter.
SFT2   As SFT1 but for all other cycles.
ESDB   Desired RMS error in bond lengths.
ESDA   Desired RMS error in bond angles.

Fixing atoms in refinement (FIX)

The command FIX allows you to pick atoms that thereafter will not move at all when CRUDE is being executed, or will only move little in REFI.

Undoing fixing of atoms in refinement (NOFIX)

The command NOFIX will remove all previously set FIX marks.

Fixing of alpha carbons in refinement (FIXCA)

The command FIXCA will fix all alpha carbons in the range to be refined. For CRUDE this fix is absolute. For REFI it means that the movements of alpha carbons will be damped strongly. Be aware that the GROMOS menu also offers the possibility to do refinement with fixed alpha carbons.

Anchoring chain ends in refinement (ANCHOR)

The command ANCHOR will fix the alpha carbons of the two extreme residues of the range you want to refine. This option is very much advised if you are refining small parts of molecules; both in CRUDE and in REFI.

Undoing anchoring of chain ends (NOANCH)

The command NOANCH switches the ANCHOR mode off.

Setting refinement parameters (PARAMS)

The command PARAMS allows you to see or change the parameters needed by the REFI option. This option is identical to the REFPAR option. The latter is only maintained for compatibility purposes.
NCYCS  Number of cycles.
NITS   Number of iterations per cycle.
SFT1   Cycle 1 will be stopped once the maximal atomic shift is 
       smaller than this parameter.
SFT2   As SFT1 but for all other cycles.
ESDB   Desired RMS error in bond lengths.
ESDA   Desired RMS error in bond angles.