CALCOM: A software for calculating the center of mass of proteins

Abstract

The center of mass of a protein is an artificial point useful for detecting important and simple features of proteins structure, shape and association. CALCOM is a software which calculates the center of mass of a protein, starting from PDB protein structure files. In the case of protein complexes and of protein-small ligand complexes, the position of protein residues or of ligand atoms respect to each protein subunit can be evaluated, as well as the distance among the center of mass of the protein subunits, in order to compare different conformations and evaluate the relative motion of subunits. Availability: The service is available at the URL: http://bioinformatica.isa.cnr.it/CALCOM/.