단백질의 sphericity measure 를 결정하는 β-probe 크기의 통계적 분석

Abstract

Organism consists of molecules. Among others, proteins are considered one of the most important units of life. Protein consists of amino acids and amino acids consists of atoms. The structure of a protein is important. Due to the general consensus of the importance of morphological structure to its functions, many studies have been performed to understand the threedimensional geometric structure of a protein. Therefore, it is believed that a simple parameter for the overall shape descriptor of a protein will be convenient if it can be easily defined and computed. In this paper, we will present a quantitative measure for the sphericity of protein based on a computational geometric construct called the betacomplex. The parameter thus obtained is determined via a statistical analysis of computed sphericity from sample set of protein structures. This paper then presents an statistical approach to determine the best parameter for the sphericity.