Dear Carlos and Phoebe,

the B-value describes the movement of an atom at first order approximation, 
i.e. as a harmonic motion. It's very unlikely that an atom that is not visible 
in density, discribes a harmonic motion. 
It never occurred to me, but modelling disorder by strong B-factor restraints 
and refining the occupancy seems quite a good idea and would be a much better 
model than an explosion of B-factors.
Coot marks atoms with reduced occupancy, hence there is no extra work required 
to visualise reduced occupancy. I am aware that some people use graphics 
rendering machinery to work with PDB files instead of a dedicated program like 
Coot, but you can never suit everyone.

Best,
Tim

On Monday, October 17, 2016 09:35:02 AM Carlos CONTRERAS-MARTEL wrote:
> Even that occupancy refinement seems to be very interesting for
> crystallographers, I complete agree with Phoebe.
> 
> On 10/14/16 17:38, Phoebe A. Rice wrote:
> > Interesting way to look at it.  But those loop residues are really in
> > the crystal with an occupancy of 1, so wouldn't letting the B factor
> > fly give a clearer description of what's in the crystal?  Especially
> > as many people know to color the structure by B factors to get a feel
> > for which bits are wiggly, but they'll never think to color it by
> > occupancy.
> 
> Let them fly ... at least for protein atoms ...
> 
> Carlos
> 
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > *From:* CCP4 bulletin board [CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] on behalf of
> > Matthias Barone [bar...@fmp-berlin.de]
> > *Sent:* Friday, October 14, 2016 8:00 AM
> > *To:* CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> > *Subject:* [ccp4bb] Antw: Re: [ccp4bb] High B factor
> > 
> > Picking up the mail of Pavel, Phenix refines occupancies..
> > If you expect the loops to be disordered, did you try to lower the
> > occupancy of these residues, following Ethan Merritt statement that
> > "general uncertainty [...] is represented better by occupancy <1
> > rather than an arbitrary large B factor" (To B or not to B,
> > doi:10.1107/S0907444911028320).
> > If this attempt does not bring the B-factors down, it will surely make
> > the model more accurate, as the atom coordinates of the loops may not
> > be correct at all, no?
> > 
> > matthias
> > 
> > >>> Pavel Afonine <pafon...@gmail.com> 14.10.16 9.36 Uhr >>>
> > >>> 
> >     If you are still worry about your Bfactor, you could try TLS,
> > 
> > Or NCS, but SA with MLHL might be better.
> > 
> > (A joke).
> 
> --
>           Carlos CONTRERAS MARTEL, Ph.D.
>                   (CR1 CNRS)
> 
>           carlos.contreras-mar...@ibs.fr
> 
>           "Bacterial Pathogenesis Group"
>          Institut de Biologie Structurale
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