| Abstract: | Graphical representation of molecular conformations is an important tool used by chemists to gain molecular insight. In spite of today's enhanced computer graphics there are still situations, such as in multiple conformation displays, in which standard visualization techniques are limited. Parallel-coordinate (‖-coords) representation, which was originally developed for visualizing multivariant datasets in fields other than chemistry, offers an alternative basis for graphical representation of molecular structures. In parallel-coordinates, the axes are drawn parallel rather than perpendicular to each other, allowing many axes to be placed and seen. This mapping procedure has unique geometric properties and useful relationships to the original space. In this article, we apply the parallel-coordinate representation for presenting peptide and protein structural conformations. In particular, we demonstrate the usefulness of parallel-coordinates in the context of conformational analysis where this representation, combined with multiple filters, allows nontrivial clustering of data points, leading to new observations. The ‖-coords representation is also demonstrated as a tool for two-dimensional (2D) representation of protein secondary structure and for identification of disulfide-bonded pairs in protein structures. Regardless of the application, an advantage of the ‖-coords approach is that it retains its inherent simplicity and ease of use, and requires little or no software development. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 18 : 1893–1902, 1997 |
