Figure 1
The aspect ratio of proteins taken from calliper measurements ac and bc distribute around a modal value of 1.6. The ratio of the longest to shortest calliper measurements for 47 677 structures (single monomer chains) taken from the PDB database form a distribution around a modal value of 1.639. By determining the ellipsoid of equivalent steric volume the proteins can be separated into prolate and oblate-shaped structures. The distributions of aspect ratio of proteins in subsets of the PDB database (see text) are shown for oblate as bc/ac and prolate as ac/bc proteins.
