SOLOMON (CCP4: Supported Program)
NAME
solomon
- density modification (phase improvement) by solvent flipping.
SYNOPSIS
solomon MAPIN foo_in.map [ MAPOUT foo_out.map
] [ RMSMAP foo_out2.map ]
[Keyworded input]
DESCRIPTION
Solomon is a program which modifies the electron density maps by averaging,
solvent flipping and protein truncation [1]. It can also remove overlapped
parts of a mask between itself and its symmetry equivalents. Please note
that this program has various non CCP4 standard features.
USAGE
Several stages are required for phase refinement with Solomon. The stages
described here assume that the phase probability distributions were determined
experimentally (i.e. SIR, MIR, MAD).
- Determine phase probability distributions, described by Hendrickson-Lattman
coefficients. This is done automatically by MLPHARE.
- Calculate the map to be flattened. Initially, you will have a map calculated
from experimental phases. It is advised that you start from a resolution
which has got significant phase information and do not yet extend the resolution!
Subsequent maps can be calculated from coefficients produced by SIGMAA.
This gives the advantage that missing reflections can be estimated from
the corresponding Fc (calculated from the flattened map). The procedure
can be improved by substituting in this way for the low resolution reflections
that are missing.
- Have a look at the map and compare it with the original FOM weighted
map. If there is no non-crystallographic symmetry, you might get some additional
improvement by playing around with the solvent multiplication factor and
the truncation level (see the keywords TRUNC and MULSOLV).
If the crystals contain a lot of solvent (70 to 80%) you might try phase
extension, but make sure the map actually improves by doing so. If you
have got very weak phase information at higher resolution, try including
it from the start, but keep the RADIUS at the lower
resolution. (If you have got reasonable phase information to 3.7 Å, and
very weak information to 3.2 Å, use a radius of 3.7 Å, and a high resolution
cutoff of 3.2 Å; don't extend to 3.2, but use all information from the
first cycle).
- Identify and refine non-crystallographic symmetry if present. The Uppsala
programmes "O", "mama" and "imp" are ideally
suited for this purpose. You must remove overlap between symmetry related
masks. The mask can be either in "O" or "CCP4" format.
- The mask will encompass a monomer. Each mask has a set of associated
symmetry operators which descibe how the density within this mask is related
to other density within the asymmetric unit. This is a bit different from
the way things are done in the "rave" package and has some advantages.
- Include the non-crystallographic restraints in "Solomon"
and run the script again. You might need to reduce the level of truncation
a bit and the solvent multiplier should probably be a bit less negative.
INPUT AND OUTPUT FILES
Input
- MAPIN
- The input map must cover the asymmetric unit exactly. The input map
(CCP4 format) is associated with the logical name MAPIN.
- others
- Input masks can either be in CCP4 or "O" style formats.
The program can automatically determine which type of format it is. These
masks are not associated with logical names but are input via the keyword
MSKIN; this is not a standard CCP4 procedure.
Another possible input file is governed by the keyword CSYM.
Output
- MAPOUT / RMSMAP
- MAPOUT and RMSMAP are both output maps and are in CCP4 format. They
are not output by default, so if output is required this must be indicated
by the keywords MAPOUT and RMSMAP.
- others
- Other output files are governed by the keywords SLVMASK and ASMASK.
All output masks will be in CCP4 format.
Conversion between formats can be done with MAMA2CCP4,
XDLMAPMAN or MAPMAN.
Note on SOLOMON masks
There are two ``features'' of SOLOMON masks which users should be aware
of:
- Although SOLOMON uses the standard CCP4 map format for
its input and output masks, it does not use the same convention as other
programs e.g. 'dm'. In SOLOMON, mask grid points are set to 0.0 for protein
and 1.0 for solvent. If you intend to import/export maps from or to other
CCP4 programs then use MAPMASK to change the
mask convention.
- Masks output by SOLOMON may suffer from artificial features, namely
lines of set grid points along the mask edges away from the origin.
For the time being this can be fixed by giving SOLOMON a map covering the
whole unit cell plus the edges, and then extracting the whole unit cell
afterwards (thus discarding the problematic sections).
E.g. run MAPMASK before and after SOLOMON, using the XYZLIM
keyword the first time to extend the mask by an extra grid point, and
the second to restore the limits to the original values.
KEYWORDED INPUT
Keywords can be upper or lower case and only the first four letters
are significant. Solomon echos keywords as it reads them, allowing you
to check the input. Keywords are only recognised if they occur at the start
of a line, but they can be preceded by spaces or tabs. Keywords which are
not found in the input are flagged to say that defaults will be used, misspelt
keywords are ignored but not flagged. After reading the keyword and its
specifier(s), the rest of the line is treated as a comment and ignored.
Lines which do not start with a keyword are treated as comments too. In
most cases, the order of the keywords is irrelevant, and you will probably
find that Solomon does not read them in the order you specified anyway.
However, there are a few exceptions (see MSKIN)!
Available keywords are:
ASMASK,
CSYM,
EXTRUDE,
MAPOUT,
MSKIN,
MSKOUT,
MULSOLV,
PTOS,
RADIUS,
RMSMAP,
SLVDENS,
SLVFRC,
SLVMASK,
TRANS,
TRUNC,
VERBOSE
VERBOSE
(default: not verbose)
This option produces more information in the log file.
MAPOUT
(default: no mapout)
This keyword only has a meaning when Solomon is modifying the electron
density. The modified map will be written to the file associated with the
logical name MAPOUT.
SLVFRC <value>
(default: 0)
Defines the fraction of the map to be treated as solvent. The protein mask
is assumed to be a connected volume without small islands. Sometimes (especially
during the first cycles) a larger fraction of the map than actually specified
will be treated as solvent. This is because small islands with a high local
standard variation (i.e. look like a protein region) are included in the
solvent region.
RADIUS <value>
(default: 3.5)
The solvent region is determined from the local standard deviation of the
map within a sphere of a radius specified in Angstroms. The standard deviation
is calculated relative to the mean solvent density, which by default is
assumed to be the same as the whole map, but which can be changed with
the keyword SLVDENS. Solomon also produces a histogram
of the local standard deviation allowing you to make a judgement of the
separation between solvent and protein. This histogram is printed if you
specify VERBOSE. The mask can be inspected with the RMSMAP
or the SLVMASK commands. Tests suggest that the optimum size
of the radius is about the resolution limit to which significant phase
information is available. Do not set it too high! The algorithm for determining
the solvent mask is different from the Wang-algorithm, which needs larger
radii!
RMSMAP
(default: not output)
A map containing the local standard deviation at each grid point is written
out (associated logical name is RMSMAP). This map can be manipulated with
CCP4 programs and inspected within "O". Solomon will inform you
about the appropriate contour level to choose to see the solvent boundary.
SLVMASK <filename>
After determining the solvent mask, it will be written to disk as specified.
See INPUT AND OUTPUT section for information on mask format.
SLVDENS <value>
(default: 0)
The mean density of the solvent after subtracting the F000 term. The solvent
mask is determined from the local standard deviation from the mean density
of the solvent, which by default is assumed to be the same as the whole
map. However, inclusion of (possibly reconstructed) very low resolution
terms can change the mean solvent density significantly. This keyword allows
one to correct for this.
MULSOLV [AUTO] <value>
(default: -1.00 with AUTO or -0.75 without)
Defines the multiplyer used to modify the solvent density with respect
to its mean, the flipping factor. For conventional solvent flattening,
set this value to 0. For solvent flipping, set this value to -1. Tests
on crystals with a solvent content of around 50% suggest that there is
a clear relationship between the optimal flipping factor and the level
of truncation. Therefore it is advisable to use the "AUTO" option,
which scales the solvent multiplier by the ratio between the variance of
the protein after and before truncation.
Tests also indicate that when the solvent content is higher
than 50%, the solvent multiplier needs to be made less negative than with
lower solvent content. In a
test case with significant data to 3 Å and a solvent content of 33%, the
best results were obtained with "MULSOLV AUTO -1.6".
TRUNC <minvalue> <maxvalue>
(default: 0.35 1)
Defines truncation levels.
trunc 0.05 0.95
will truncate the lowest and highest 5 percent of the protein area of
the map. Tests strongly suggest that by truncating the lower 30 to 40%
of the protein, major improvements of the phases can be obtained. It is
likely that there is a relationship between the optimum level of truncation
and the maximum resoltion of the data. In test cases of crystals diffraction
beyond 3 Å, the optimum lies between 30 and 40%.
PTOS <value>
(default: 1.31)
Ratio between the mean protein density and the mean solvent density. This
is used in conjunction with EXTRUDE.
EXTRUDE
(default: not extrude)
By specifying "EXTRUDE", very low resolution structure factors
will be reconstructed. If low resolution terms are missing or are not well
phased, the mean protein density will be almost equal to the mean solvent
density. If the density modification procedure is used to also reconstruct
missing terms (by using the program SIGMAA or FFT
to sustitute Fc), a constant value (which can be negative) will be added
to the grid points in the solvent, adjusting the mean ratio between
protein and solvent to be as given by PTOS. It is assumed that
the lowest density found within the protein region is zero after adding
in an F000 term. The main function of this keyword is to prevent the inflation
of the mean protein density during iterative density modification caused
by truncating protein density on every cycle.
CSYM <filename>
(default: operators from mapfile)
"O"-style crystallographic symmetry operators. If this keyword
is omitted, the symmetry operators from the input map are used.
ASMASK <filename>
(default: none)
This keyword only has a meaning when Solomon is removing overlap and generating
new masks. If this keyword is given, a mask will be writen to disk which
defines the area of the asymmetric unit covered by all the the other specified
masks. See INPUT AND OUTPUT section for information on mask
format.
MSKIN <filename>
TRANS <filename>
[MSKOUT <filename>]
A "mskin" keyword, defining the filename of an "O"-style
mask or a CCP4 style mask. The "O" masks are similar in format
and are ASCII files. This keyword is followed by the transformations of
the mask producing the symmetry related copies ("trans" keyword).
The transformation matrices are read from an ASCII file (see example below)
and are in the 'O' style. However, Solomon can read these files with or
without the normal 'O' data block header. Like in 'dm' the translation part
is in Angstrom units. Do not forget to provide the unit symmetry operator
too!!
If a "trans" keyword is followed by the "mskout"
keyword, averaging will not be undertaken, but instead the masks will be
checked for overlap, and where overlap occurs, this will be removed by
dividing the common volume between the overlapping masks. The trimmed masks
will be written to disk as specified by the filename following the "mskout"
keyword. CCP4 masks will not need to be trimmed if generated from MAPMASK
or NCSMASK. The output mask will have the same
format as the input mask.
An example:
mskin r1.msk
trans unit.ncs
mskout r1trim.msk
trans r1tor3.msk
mskout r3trim.msk
No averaging will be undertaken (at least one "mskout" keyword
was present in the command file).
Any overlap between the mask and any of its symmetry related copies
(either crystallographic, non-crystallographic, or a combination of both)
will be removed, and the resulting symmetry related masks will be written
to disk with the specified filenames.
In addition, "O"-style non-crystallographic symmetry operators
will be written to disk. Their filenames are constructed by replacing the
extension of the new mask by "ncs%d", where "%d" is
an integer, indicating which symmetry is described. The integer indicates
the mask which will be generated by the symmetry operation:
r1trim.ncs0 : unity operator
r1trim.ncs1 : generates r3trim.msk from r1trim.msk
r3trim.ncs0 : generates r1trim.msk from r3trim.msk
r3trim.ncs1 : unity oprator
Another example:
mskin r1trim.msk
trans r1trim.ncs0
trans r1trim.ncs1
mskin r3trim.msk
trans r3trim.ncs0
trans r3trim.ncs1
The density in "r1trim.msk" will be averaged with the density
as defined by the symmetry operators "r1trim.ncs0" and "r1trim.ncs1".
Likewise, the density within "r3trim.msk" will be averaged. The
maps produced by averaging contain just the density local to the specified
maps, and are on the same scale. Their filenames are constructed by replacing
the extension ".msk" by ".map". So, the files "r1trim.map"
and "r3trim.map" are produced.
REFERENCES
- Abrahams J. P. and Leslie A. G. W., Acta Cryst. D52,
30-42 (1996)
AUTHOR
Jan-Pieter Abrahams, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge.
I/O subroutines modified by: Kevin Cowtan, University of York.
SEE ALSO
MAMA2CCP4, XDLMAPMAN,
DM
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