PDBCirclePlot: A Novel Visualization Method for Protein Structures

Abstract

Interactive molecular graphics applications facilitate analysis of three dimensional protein structures. Naturally, non-interactive 2-D snapshots of the protein structures do not convey the same level of geometric detail. Several 2-D visualization methods have been in use to summarize structural information, including contact maps and 2-D cartoon views. We present a new approach for 2-D visualization of protein structures where amino acid residues are displayed on a circle and spatially close residues are depicted by links. Furthermore, residue-specific properties, such as conservation, accessibility, temperature factor, can be displayed as plots on the same circular view.