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How alike are the shapes of two random chains?
Author(s) -
McLachlan A. D.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
biopolymers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.556
H-Index - 125
eISSN - 1097-0282
pISSN - 0006-3525
DOI - 10.1002/bip.360230716
Subject(s) - chain (unit) , root mean square , chemistry , square (algebra) , crystallography , square root , mean square , root (linguistics) , combinatorics , statistical physics , geometry , statistics , mathematics , physics , quantum mechanics , linguistics , philosophy
Two completely flexible random chains containing N atoms joined by links of length L can be superimposed by rigid‐body motions to match their structures as closely as possible. The statistics of the root‐mean‐square best‐fit distance D are discussed. For long chains, D 2 tends of 0.125 L 2 N . Thus, for a protein of 100 residues, where the C α ‐C α distance is L = 3.8 Å, the expected root‐mean‐square atomic distance is 13.4 Å. This result gives a surprisingly good fit to the observed results for unrelated structures.