Dear Tristan, Thank you for your post of earlier today regarding the problem of cis and trans peptide planes in the PDB. We also realised this problem a while ago and an article describing this problem and a solution is presently under review at Acta Cryst. D. After analysis of the PDB we can state with >95% certainty that ~4600 trans -> cis flips in ~2800 entries (and ~70K peptide-plane flips) are needed in the PDB. Around a third of the trans -> cis corrections concern non-prolines. We hope to be able to deal with the problem of cis -> trans corrections later. In the tradition of our group, the software to detect these flips is already available at swift.cmbi.ru.nl.
Hopefully, the referees of our article consider this topic just as important as you and I do :-). Kind regards, Wouter Touw and Gert Vriend On 02/16/2015 10:58 AM, Tristan Croll wrote: Dear all, My apologies for the spam-like nature of my post, but I would like to draw your attention to an important issue (outlined in an upcoming short communication to Acta D, which will appear at doi:10.1107/S1399004715000826 once it's online). At present, neither the structural quality checks in commonly-used crystallography packages nor those run on deposition of a structure to the PDB are flagging the presence of non-proline cis peptide bonds. This has led to the presence of many erroneous cis bonds creeping into the PDB - primarily in low-resolution structures as one would expect, but I have identified clearly erroneous examples in structures with resolutions as high as 1.3 Angstroms. From my analysis, I estimate that a few thousand structures have been affected to some extent, with the worst cases having as high as 3% of their peptide bonds in cis. Particularly if you have published anything >2.5 Angstroms in the past few years, may I gently suggest that you make a quick double-check of your deposited structures? This can be done quickly and simply in Coot (Extensions-Modelling-Residues with Cis peptide bonds). Best regards, Tristan Het Radboudumc staat geregistreerd bij de Kamer van Koophandel in het handelsregister onder nummer 41055629. The Radboud university medical center is listed in the Commercial Register of the Chamber of Commerce under file number 41055629.
