Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29471780›Full record

ArticleBMC bioinformatics2018

How large B-factors can be in protein crystal structures.

Oliviero Carugo

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in BMC bioinformatics, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
45citing papers in PubMed
5.1field-weighted citation impact, top 3% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

45 citing papers in PubMed, 101 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Review
  2. Crystal structure of the folded domains of Xrs2 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae.Acta crystallographica. Section F, Structural biology communications · 2025
    Article
  3. PEGASUS: Prediction of MD-derived protein flexibility from sequence.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2025
    Article
  4. Standards for MicroED.Acta crystallographica. Section C, Structural chemistry · 2025
    Article
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  10. Review
  11. Article
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  14. Structural and biochemical characterization ofProcess biochemistry (Barking, London, England) · 2023
    Article
  15. Statistical learning of protein elastic network from positional covariance matrix.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2023
    Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. B-factor accuracy in protein crystal structures.Acta crystallographica. Section D, Structural biology · 2022
    Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author at 1 institution in 2 countries.

Oliviero CarugoDepartment of Structural and Computational Biology, University of Vienna, Campus Vienna Biocenter 5, A-1030, Vienna, Austria. oliviero.carugo@univie.ac.at.ORCID 0000-0002-2924-9016
University of Vienna · AT

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundProtein crystal structures are potentially over-interpreted since they are routinely refined without any restraint on the upper limit of atomic B-factors. Consequently, some of their atoms, undetected in the electron density maps, are allowed to reach extremely large B-factors, even above 100 square Angstroms, and their final positions are purely speculative and not based on any experimental evidence.

resultsA strategy to define B-factors upper limits is described here, based on the analysis of protein crystal structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank prior 2008, when the tendency to allow B-factor to arbitrary inflate was limited. This B-factor upper limit (B_max) is determined by extrapolating the relationship between crystal structure average B-factor and percentage of crystal volume occupied by solvent (pcVol) to pcVol =100%, when, ab absurdo, the crystal contains only liquid solvent, the structure of which is, by definition, undetectable in electron density maps.

conclusionsIt is thus possible to highlight structures with average B-factors larger than B_max, which should be considered with caution by the users of the information deposited in the Protein Data Bank, in order to avoid scientifically deleterious over-interpretations.

Indexed as

Amino AcidsAmino Acid SequenceCrystallography, X-RayDatabases, ProteinModels, MolecularProtein ConformationProteinsSolventsAmino AcidsProteinsSolventsAtomic displacement parameterB-factorCrystal structureMatthews coefficientProtein structure validation

Identifiers

PMID29471780
PMCPMC5824579
OpenAlexW2795104011

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.