Sunday, August 16, 2009

Curves+ vs 3DNA

While browsing Nucleic Acids Research recently, I noticed the paper titled "Conformational analysis of nucleic acids revisited: Curves+" by Dr. Lavery et al. [advance access published online on July 22, 2009]. I read it through carefully during the weekend and played around with the software. Overall, I was fairly impressed, and also happy to see that "It [Curves+] adopts the generally accepted reference frame for nucleic acid bases and no longer shows any significant difference with analysis programs such as 3DNA for intra- or inter-base pair parameters."

Anyone who has ever worked on nucleic acid structures (especially DNA) should be familiar with Curves, an analysis program that has been widely used over the past twenty years. Only in recent years has 3DNA become popular. By and large, though, it is my opinion that 3DNA and Curves are constructive competitors in nucleic acid structure analysis with complementary functionality. As I put it six years ago, before the 13th Conversation at Albany: "Curves has special features that 3DNA does not want to repeat/compete (e.g. global parameters, groove dimension parameters). Nevertheless, we provide an option in a 3DNA utility program (find_pair) to generate input to Curves directly from a PDB data file" on June 6, 2003, and emphasized again on June 09, 2003: "We also see Curves unique in defining global parameters, bending analysis and groove dimensions." 3DNA's real strength, as demonstrated in our 2008 Nature Protocols paper, lies in its integrated approach that combines nucleic acid structure analysis, rebuilding, and visualization into a single software package (see image to the right and above).

Now the nucleic acid structure community is blessed with the new Curves+, which "is algorithmically simpler and computationally much faster than the earlier Curves approach", yet still provides its 'hallmark' curvilinear axis and "a full analysis of groove widths and depth". When I read the text, I especially liked the INTRODUCTION section, which provides a nice summary of relevant background information on nucleic acid conformational analysis. An important feature of Curves+ is its integration of the analysis of molecular dynamics trajectories. In contrast, 3DNA lacks direct support in this area (even though I know of such applications from questions posted on the 3DNA forum), mostly due to the fact that I am not an 'energetic' person. Of special note is a policy-related advantage Curves+ has over 3DNA: Curves+ is distributed freely, and with source code available. On the other hand, due to Rutgers' license constraints and various other (undocumented) reasons, 3DNA users are still having difficulty in accessing 3DNA v2.0 I compiled several months ago!

It is worth noting that the major differences in slide (+0.47 Å) and X-displacement (+0.77 Å) in Curves+ vs the old Curves (~0.5 Å and ~0.8 Å, respectively) are nearly exactly those uncovered a decade ago in "Resolving the discrepancies among nucleic acid conformational analyses" [Lu and Olson, J Mol Biol. 1999 Jan 29; 285(4):1563-75]:
Except for Curves, which defines the local frame in terms of the canonical B-DNA fiber structure (Leslie et al., 1980), the base origins are roughly coincident in the different schemes, but are significantly displaced (~0.8 Å along the positive x-axis) from the Curves reference. As illustrated below, this offset gives rise to systematic discrepancies of ~0.5 Å in slide and ~0.8 Å in global x-displacement in Curves compared with other programs, and also contributes to differences in rise at kinked steps. (p. 1566)

Please note that Curves+ has introduced new name list variables — most notably, lib= — and other subtle format changes, thus rendering the find_pair generated input files (with option '-c') no longer valid. However, it would be easy to manually edit the input file to make it work for Curves+, since the most significant part — i.e., specifying paired nucleotides — does not change. Given time and upon user request, however, I would consider to write a new script to automate the process.

Overall, it is to the user community's advantage to have both 3DNA and Curves+ or a choice between the two programs, and I am more than willing to build a bridge between them to make users' lives easier.

3 comments:

  1. Hello Xiang-Jun,

    This is Mauricio from Dr. Olson lab.
    Thank you very much for your posts to your blog, they are very interesting and helpful for those of us who want to understand nucleic acids.

    Mauricio

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello.

    I'm in the desperate need of v2.0 Pdf manual. where can I find it?

    Thank you,
    Davood

    n_davood@yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for your comment. There is currently no 3DNA v2.0 user’s manual in PDF yet. What specific questions do you have? I certainly agree that more detailed documentation to 3DNA v2.0 is much needed, especially for beginners to the filed of nucleic acid structures. I am wishing that I would be able to devote more of my time to 3DNA-related topics, but it all depends.

    For the time being, the best way (in my opinion) to get the most of 3DNA v2.0 is to read carefully of the 3DNA 2008 NP paper, and reproduce all the example recipes. As I stated in the 3DNA forum (http://3dna.rutgers.edu:8080/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=122):

    "Specifically, I would strive to get back to you, quickly and concretely, on every question regarding any technical details that led to the results reported in our 3DNA 2008 NP paper. ... It is my understanding from the very beginning that getting 3DNA (or any serious software product, for that matter) published is just the beginning. In the long run, it is the continuous refinements of the software, as driven by its user community, that make a real difference."

    Xiang-Jun

    ReplyDelete

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