Part 2: Analyzing mutations - Measuring distances

A good way to do this is to render the whole of G6PD as backbone, select the residues of interest and then spacefill them. If you wished to highlight residues 100, 120 and 151, you would first change the structure to a backbone representation by typing:

• In the Display panel, next to 'all', click 'S'
• Click 'as'
• Click 'ribbon'

You would then highlight the residues of interest by typing:

select resi 100+120+151
show spheres, sele

This selects the specified residues and then shows spheres for that selection of residues.

For example, to colour them in pink you would type:

colour pink, sele

Now measure the distance between the sites of the mutations and the active/binding site amino acids. To do this do as follows:

A quicker way of doing this is to use Measurement from the Wizard menu and then left click the two atoms of interest. You can keep repeating this with pairs of atoms. Click Done on the right when you have finished.

For each of the mutation sites in turn, rotate the view so that you can identify the closest active/binding site residue. Try to find the atoms in the mutated residue and the active/binding site residue which are closest to one another. You don't need to be too precise about this.

Now Control-Middle-click the two atoms that are closest to one another (one atom in the mutated residue and one in the active/binding site residue). Record the distance for each of the mutations.