Two dimensional graphics (GRATWO)

Introduction.

WHAT IF allows you to use the graphics window as a simple two dimensional graphics device. The general option GRATWO brings you in the menu from which the two dimensional graphics options can be executed. All two dimesional graphics options like phi-psi plots, or B-factor plots etc. are made pickable. This means that you can pick the items to label them, or to see the underlying structure.

In all plots (eg phi-psi, or B-factor plots) the colour will be the one as set for the alpha carbon.

Except in the case of phi-psi plots which are screen filling, all plots take only part of the screen. You will be prompted for the position of the plot at the screen.

WARNING. Two dimesional graphical MOL-items are normal three dimensional items that often have all Z-coordinates equal to zero. Therefore if you rotate them 90 degrees you see nothing any more!

The following options are available:

Ramachandran plot options

The old ramachandran plot option (PHIPSI)

The command PHIPSI prompts you for residue ranges and will generate a Ramachandran plot which will be stored in a MOL-item. Look also at the more general and more interactive options RAMAON and RAMAOF.

In the Ramachandran plots you see contourlines. These lines represent a 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 percent chance that a residue falls outside those lines (these percentages are calculated from the proteins that were selected to sit in the WHAT IF SCAN3D database).

The colour code is like for the DSSP menu: blue is helix, red=strand, green=turn and loop. Diagonal crosses are 'normal' residues; orthogonal crosses are glycines and ope squares are prolines.

Label residue types in phi-psi plot (L2DTYP)

This command will prompt you for molecule numbers just like the PHIPSI command does. It will however, also ask for a residue type. All residues of the requested type that belong to the requested molecule(s) will be labeled in the Ramachandran plot.

Activating the interactive Ramachandran plot (RAMAON)

The command RAMAON creates the interactive Ramachandran plot. to the alpha carbon colour (default=green). The phi-psi plot can be looked at in stereo. The third dimension in this plot indicates the deviation of perfect (being 0 or 180 degrees) omega angles.

The interactive Ramchandran plot is connected to the soup and to the sequence bar at the bottom of the screen. That means that if you change the colour of the alpha carbons of the residues represented in the interactive Ramachandran plot, the crosses in the plot will change colour too. Also it does not matter where you pick, an atom, the sequence bar at the bottom of the screen, or the interactive Ramachandran plot, all three of them will be lebeled.

The button RAMACH in the menu at the bottom of the screen will toggle the visibility of the interactive Ramachandran plot On/Off.

De-activating the interactive Ramachandran plot (RAMAOF)

The command RAMAOF switches off the interactive Ramachandran plot that you generated with the RAMAON option.

The button RAMACH in the menu at the bottom of the screen will toggle the visibility of the interactive Ramachandran plot On/Off.

Property moment plot (PRPMOM)

In many cases WHAT IF creates data per residue and displays this, or writes it out in a file. In most of these cases these values (whatever they are, quality, average shift, torsion angle, etc.) are also stored as the so-called property values. These property values can be plotted with this option. Property values are shown in brackets (as Prp=value) on the first line of the output per residue if you issue the LISTA command.

Crystallografic B-factor plot (BFPLOT)

This option makes a plot of the average B-factor per residue versus the residue number. This option will of course, only work for molecules that have atomic B-factors, and not for models or NMR structures.

Energy terms plot (ETPLOT)

This option makes a plot of the GROMOS energy content per atom summed over the whole residue versus the residue number. You will be prompted for the energy term to be used. This option has some help in it. Of course, this option only works if you have calculated the energy per atom first (See GETETM in the GROMOS menu) for which you will need GROMOS installed on your machine.

Shrinivasan phi-psi plot (PPPSRI)

The command PPPSRI will cause WHAT IF to generate a phi-psi plot according to Shrinivasans method. Just try it, it does not take much time. (Phi are the bars above the central bar, Psi is below it).

Labeling atoms (ATMLAB)

The command ATMLAB will cause WHAT IF to ask you to give a residue number and an atom name (in that residue). After that you will be promted for a text line (of maximally 80 characters). This textline will be placed next to the requested atom. The size of the charaters can be selected. I suggest you use the defaults. The text is not screen oriented. That means that if you rotate the molecule, the text will also rotate. You should therefore place the labels only when the final orientation for the photo or slide has been chosen. Atom labels are normal mol-items. They can therefore be rotated translated, but also plotted.

This option is 100% identical to the LABATM option in the LABEL menu.

De-activating pickability (NOPIC2)

Ramachandran plots, B-factor plots, etc., are all pickable. If, however, you have a whole screen full of information, you might want to get rid of this pickability because you might accidentally pick these plots (or their remains) at moments that you dont want that. NOPIC2 will irreversibly make the two-dimensional plot unpickable.

Graphics menu usage

Several options in the bar of pickable options at the right side of the screen have a slightly different function when used with two dimensional objects than when used with three dimensional objects (such as molecules). The most prominent differences aoocur in NEIM and CONT.

(NEIM)

NEIM will also allow you to pick in a two dimensional graphics object. Pick there where you intuitively expect the pick, except with contact boxes where the lower left corner needs to be picked. WHAT IF will show the local environment of the residue(s) that correspond with the picked box, cross, etc. This environment is not pickable.

Pick INIT to remove this local structure.

The residues will be translated from their normal soup positions to such a position that they roughly are 'near' the cross, contact square, etc. This way you do not have to search through the whole graphics screen.

(CONT)

CONT will ask you to pick something. This atom, box, cross, etc. will now become the center of the graphics.

Parameters (PARAMS)

The same parameters that are active in the ANACON menu (see chapter on contac analysis) can be used from the two dimensional graphics menu. Some of them however are rather useless here. There are about ten parameters that can be changed to influence what the pictures at te screen will look like, only two of those are useful for the GRATWO menu. The user changes these parameters by name. They are called:
FRMCOL = Colour of frame around plot (only plots that have a frame...)
NEICOL = Colour of neighbouring residues after picking
The other parameters are explained in the ANACON menu, under PARAMS.