How precise are reported protein coordinate data?
Arun Konagurthu, Lloyd Allison, David Abramson, Peter Stuckey and Arthur Lesk
Acta Cryst., D70(3), pp.904-906, doi:10.1107/S1399004713031787, March 2014
Atomic coordinates in the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) are generally reported to greater precision than the experimental structure determinations have actually achieved. By using information theory & data compression to study the compressibility of protein atomic coordinates, it is possible to quantify the amount of randomness in the coordinate data & thereby to determine the realistic precision of the reported coordinates. On avg., the value of each C_alpha coordinate in a set of selected p.structures solved at a variety of resolutions is good to about 0.1A.