Uncertainty-aware Ramachandran Plots

TitleUncertainty-aware Ramachandran Plots
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2019
AuthorsMaack, Robin, Hagen Hans, and Gillmann Christina
Conference NamePacificVis 2019
AbstractRamachandran Plots are an important tool for researchers in biochemistry to examine the stability of a molecule. In these plots, dihedral (torsion) angles of the protein’s backbone are visualized on a plane, where different areas are known to be stable configurations. Unfortunately, the underlying atom positions are affected by uncertainty, which is usually captured and expressed using the b-value. For classic Ramachandran Plots, this uncertainty is not propagated when computing the dihedral angles and neglected when visualizing a Ramachandran Plot. To solve this problem, this paper presents an extended version of the Ramachandran Plot, which allows to communicate the uncertainty of atom positions along the computation of dihedral angles and an intuitive visualization. We show the effectiveness of the presented approach by examining different Ramachandran Plots for molecules and show how the inclusion of uncertainty helps biochemistry researchers to determine the stability of a protein with higher accuracy.
Undefined