[chimerax-users] Automate calculation and saving of residues' structural attributes

[André]

Hi Elaine,

Thank you so much for your very helpful answer!

Yeah, Tom told me before that it wouldn't be possible to directly calculate
SESA and relSESA with ChimeraX. So, I'll probably have to stick with
Chimera. I've just discovered the "list" command (functional in Chimera),
and I think that with it I'll be able to easily get all the attributes by
using the --nogui startup.
I'll work on it in the following days, then I'll come back with updates.

Once again, thank you very much!

Best,
André.

Em sex., 21 de jan. de 2022 às 13:55, Elaine Meng <meng at cgl.ucsf.edu>
escreveu:

> Hi André,
> Although it displays an SES, ChimeraX does not calculate SES areas, only
> SAS areas (command "measure sasa" which also assigns a residue attribute).
> <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/measure.html#sasa>
>
> For Chimera, another group had provided SES reference areas for the
> exposed state represented by G-X-G tripeptides, but I don't know of a
> similar SAS reference area set for ChimeraX that could be used to calculate
> relative exposure, sorry.  In case others are interested, the Chimera
> relative exposure calculation giving relSESA is described here:
> <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/surfnorm.html>
>
> So depending on the importance of SESA and relSESA, you may need to use
> Chimera, or at least some method outside of ChimeraX.
>
> In both ChimeraX and Chimera, bfactor is read from the input PDB file, and
> phi and psi are calculated automatically for peptide/protein structures
> when they are read in.  ChimeraX atom and residue attributes:
> <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/attributes.html#atom>
> <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/attributes.html#residue>
>
> kdHydrophobicity is not a calculation, but a simple lookup table by amino
> acid type.  You may not need either program to "calculate" it, but it is
> automatically assigned in Chimera.  It can be assigned in ChimeraX by
> running this comand script:
> <
> https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/kyte-doolittle_hydrophobicity.cxc
> >
>
> ...or you can just assign it directly yourself by lookup table.  The
> values along with some alternative hydrophobicity scales (lookup tables)
> are summarized here:
> <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/hydrophob.html>
>
> I hope this helps,
> Elaine
> -----
> Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.
> UCSF Chimera(X) team
> Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
> University of California, San Francisco
>
> > On Jan 21, 2022, at 7:28 AM, André via ChimeraX-users <
> chimerax-users at cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Christian,
> >
> > Thank you so much for your solution! That indeed helps a lot, since it
> shows me how to execute ChimeraX scripts independently and directly from
> Python!
> >
> > Now, do you know which commands I should use to calculate the following
> structural attributes for all residues: areaSAS, areaSES, relSESA, bfactor,
> kdhydro, phi, psi?
> >
> > I do it manually in Chimera (haven't figured out how to do the same in
> ChimeraX yet), by following the route: Tools -> Structure Analysis ->
> Render by Attribute -> File -> Save Attributes -> Attribute to Save, which
> allows each attribute of residues to be saved as txt files, which contain
> the residue number and respective attribute, for all residues in the
> protein. For example, the file for areaSAS looks like this:
> >
> > attribute: areaSAS
> > recipient: residues
> > :1.B 116.71626508235931
> > :2.B 118.39353680610657
> > ...
> >
> > Thus, that's what I wanted to do: figure out which commands I should use
> to get the same result as the manual route above (although it  is not
> really necessary that the txt file is generated directly -- if the needed
> information appear in the stdout_as_str string, just like in the example
> you showed, I'd be able to parse it to a file, and the problem would be
> solved!).
> >
> > Once again, thank you for your help!
> >
> > Best,
> > André.
> >
> >
> >
> > Em sex., 21 de jan. de 2022 às 09:56, Christian Tüting <
> christian.tueting at biochemtech.uni-halle.de> escreveu:
> > Hi André,
> >
> > i am pretty sure, that my solution is very crude and that there are
> > better ways of doing it (like importing chimerax in the python code
> > directly). I guess, you'll get more anwsers soon.
> >
> > I quickly wrote a script, which performs a chimerax task independently,
> > by just running python code.
> >
> > First: a chimerax script file with the desired commands:
> >
> > script.cxc:
> > open 7ott
> > surface #1
> > mearuse area #1
> > exit
> >
> > Note: the exit command is needed, otherwise the subprocress will idle in
> > the chimerax cmd line.
> >
> >
> > Second: a python script, which execute this script in chimerax and
> > fetches the output:
> >
> > test.py:
> >
> > import subprocess
> > import os
> >
> > cwd = os.getcwd()
> >
> > chimerax = "/Applications/ChimeraX_Daily.app/Contents/MacOS/ChimeraX"
> > scriptfile = f"{cwd}/script.cxc"
> >
> > cmd = [chimerax, "--nogui",scriptfile]
> > p = subprocess.run(" ".join(cmd),shell = True,capture_output=True)
> >
> > stdout_as_str = p.stdout.decode("utf-8")
> > print(stdout_as_str)
> >
> > This just runs a subprocess and fetches the output to a string, which
> > you can than further analyse.
> >
> >
> > Best
> > Christian
> >
> >
> >
> > Dr. rer. nat. Christian Tüting
> >
> > Kastritis Laboratory for Biomolecular Research
> > Cryo-Electron Microscopy & Computational Structural Biology
> > ________________________________________________
> > Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
> > Biozentrum, Room A.2.19
> > IWE ZIK HALOmem NWG III
> > "Kryo-Elektronenmikroskopie an Membranproteinkomplexen"
> > Weinbergweg 22, 06120 Halle
> > tel: +49 345 5524985
> > web (Lab): https://blogs.urz.uni-halle.de/kastritislab/
> > web (HALOmem): https://www.halomem.de/en/
> > >>> André via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users at cgl.ucsf.edu> 01/21/22 1:29
> > PM >>>
> > Hello!
> >
> > I'm working on an automated pipeline (in Python) for the structural
> > analysis of proteins. In particular, I'm using Chimera to calculate and
> > save to .txt files some structural properties of residues (namely:
> > areaSAS,
> > areaSES, relSESA, bfactor, kdhydro, phi, psi). These files are the
> > inputs
> > of the pipeline.
> > However, currently the files are exported manually, and, for the purpose
> > of
> > building a fully automated pipeline, it would be great to also automate
> > this step of calculating the attributes and exporting their respective
> > files.
> >
> > I searched a lot, and tried some ways to achieve such an automation
> > (using
> > Chimera), but nothing worked.
> > And I also considered using ChimeraX. In particular, I went through
> > ChimeraX Programming Manual (
> > https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/devel/index.html#), but, if I
> > understood correctly, I'd only be able to import chimerax and use its
> > functions in the Python interpreter within ChimeraX (Tools >> General >>
> > Shell).
> > At first, I'd like to import chimerax as a module in a Python
> > interpreter
> > outside of ChimeraX, so that manually opening ChimeraX wouldn't be
> > necessary in order to save the files with the residues' attributes. But,
> > from some other threads in the mailing list, I found that it wouldn't be
> > possible (right?)
> >
> > But I also found out that I could write a .py script which calculates
> > and
> > exports the files with the residues' properties, and then run it with
> > ChimeraX application from the command-line, something like: *chimerax
> > --nogui myscript.py*
> > If that works, I think that my automation problem would be solved! The
> > only
> > problem is that I really couldn't figure out the Python code to
> > calculate
> > and export the aforementioned residues' properties (I took a look in
> > ChimeraX Recipes (https://rbvi.github.io/chimerax-recipes/), but I
> > couldn't
> > find what I need, nor more detailed documentation).
> >
> > Given that, I'd like to know if anyone has done something like this,
> > and/or
> > have any guidance on how I could proceed.
> >
> > I really appreciate any help you can provide!
> > (And thanks to Tom Goddard for suggesting moving the discussion here to
> > the
> > ChimeraX mailing list).
> >
> > Thank you so much,
> > André.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > ChimeraX-users at cgl.ucsf.edu
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>
>
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