This message is especially directed towards the membrane proteins
community.
Dear everyone,
we are very pleased to announce the release of the Detergent Belt
Server -> http://detbelt.ibcp.fr
Following our discovery of a method to quantify detergents around
membrane proteins, we have build the detbelt server to allow for a
simple representation of the detergent belt around your protein
of interest. This representation is a simple approximation and
grants a rapid estimation of the detergent belt, especially fitted
to biochemists to better understand what is going on in your
test tube. (Details on the server and the publication of the
detergent quantification method are available on the tutorial page).
The server allows you to play with different detergents
interactively by recomputing the belt in your web browser, which
allows you to refine your biochemical hypothesis. The server allows
you to add several detergents, each with different values, and will
compute the volume associated with these detergents mixtures. It
outputs different metrics making it easier to compare
detergent-occupied volumes, and a PyMOL script to generate a
publication quality image.
For the moment, membrane protein pdb file should be pre-oriented
using the PPM server procedure as it runs slow on the server; please
visit the tutorial web page for more details (see "1"). We are
working towards speeding up this process and making it all
integrated in the near future. For testing purposes, I attach a
pre-oriented pdb so that you can have an idea of the information you
can obtain.
Finally, we welcome any feedback to this alpha release; we welcome
bug reports as well as creative feedback: if you think this tool has
some potential for your research, please contact us and we will see
what can be done.
Wishing you good visualization
All the best
The DetBelt team
