Whaddaya Know: A Guide to Uncertainty and Subjectivity in Structural Biology

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• 作者：Joel P. Mackay¹ ; ^{joel.mackay@sydney.edu.au} ; Michael J. Landsberg² ; Andrew E. Whitten³ ; Charles S. Bond⁴
• 关键词：structural biology ; uncertainty ; X-ray crystallography ; NMR spectroscopy ; single-particle cryo-electron microscopy ; small-angle scattering
• 刊名：Trends in Biochemical Sciences
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：42
• 期：2
• 页码：155-167
• 全文大小：3593 K
• 卷排序：42

文摘

The methods of structural biology, while powerful, are technically complex. Although the Protein Data Bank (PDB) provides a repository that allows anyone to download any structure, many users would not appreciate the caveats that should be considered when examining a structure. Here, we describe several key uncertainties associated with the application of X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, single-particle electron microscopy (SPEM), and small-angle scattering (SAS) to biological macromolecules. The take-home message is that structures are not absolute truths – they are models that fit the experimental data and therefore have uncertainty and subjectivity associated with them. These uncertainties must be appreciated – careful reading of the associated paper, and any validation report provided by the structure database, is highly recommended.