solomon MAPIN foo_in.map [ MAPOUT foo_out.map
] [ RMSMAP foo_out2.map ]
[Keyworded input]
Solomon is a program which modifies the electron density maps by averaging, solvent flipping and protein truncation [1]. It can also remove overlapped parts of a mask between itself and its symmetry equivalents. Please note that this program has various non CCP4 standard features.
Several stages are required for phase refinement with Solomon. The stages described here assume that the phase probability distributions were determined experimentally (i.e. SIR, MIR, MAD).
Subsequent maps can be calculated from coefficients produced by SIGMAA. This gives the advantage that missing reflections can be estimated from the corresponding Fc (calculated from the flattened map). The procedure can be improved by substituting in this way for the low resolution reflections that are missing.
Conversion between formats can be done with MAMA2CCP4, XDLMAPMAN or MAPMAN.
There are two ``features'' of SOLOMON masks which users should be aware of:
Keywords can be upper or lower case and only the first four letters are significant. Solomon echoes keywords as it reads them, allowing you to check the input. Keywords are only recognised if they occur at the start of a line, but they can be preceded by spaces or tabs. Keywords which are not found in the input are flagged to say that defaults will be used, misspelt keywords are ignored but not flagged. After reading the keyword and its specifier(s), the rest of the line is treated as a comment and ignored. Lines which do not start with a keyword are treated as comments too. In most cases, the order of the keywords is irrelevant, and you will probably find that Solomon does not read them in the order you specified anyway. However, there are a few exceptions (see MSKIN)!
Available keywords are:
ASMASK, CSYM, EXTRUDE, MAPOUT, MSKIN, MSKOUT, MULSOLV, PTOS, RADIUS, RMSMAP, SLVDENS, SLVFRC, SLVMASK, TRANS, TRUNC, VERBOSE
(default: not verbose)
This option produces more information in the log file.
(default: no mapout)
This keyword only has a meaning when Solomon is modifying the electron
density. The modified map will be written to the file associated with the
logical name MAPOUT.
(default: 0)
Defines the fraction of the map to be treated as solvent. The protein mask
is assumed to be a connected volume without small islands. Sometimes (especially
during the first cycles) a larger fraction of the map than actually specified
will be treated as solvent. This is because small islands with a high local
standard variation (i.e. look like a protein region) are included in the
solvent region.
(default: 3.5)
The solvent region is determined from the local standard deviation of the
map within a sphere of a radius specified in Angstroms. The standard deviation
is calculated relative to the mean solvent density, which by default is
assumed to be the same as the whole map, but which can be changed with
the keyword SLVDENS. Solomon also produces a histogram
of the local standard deviation allowing you to make a judgement of the
separation between solvent and protein. This histogram is printed if you
specify VERBOSE. The mask can be inspected with the RMSMAP
or the SLVMASK commands. Tests suggest that the optimum size
of the radius is about the resolution limit to which significant phase
information is available. Do not set it too high! The algorithm for determining
the solvent mask is different from the Wang-algorithm, which needs larger
radii!
(default: not output)
A map containing the local standard deviation at each grid point is written
out (associated logical name is RMSMAP). This map can be manipulated with
CCP4 programs and inspected within "O". Solomon will inform you
about the appropriate contour level to choose to see the solvent boundary.
After determining the solvent mask, it will be written to disk as specified. See INPUT AND OUTPUT section for information on mask format.
(default: 0)
The mean density of the solvent after subtracting the F000 term. The solvent
mask is determined from the local standard deviation from the mean density
of the solvent, which by default is assumed to be the same as the whole
map. However, inclusion of (possibly reconstructed) very low resolution
terms can change the mean solvent density significantly. This keyword allows
one to correct for this.
(default: -1.00 with AUTO or -0.75 without)
Defines the multiplier used to modify the solvent density with respect
to its mean, the flipping factor. For conventional solvent flattening,
set this value to 0. For solvent flipping, set this value to -1. Tests
on crystals with a solvent content of around 50% suggest that there is
a clear relationship between the optimal flipping factor and the level
of truncation. Therefore it is advisable to use the "AUTO" option,
which scales the solvent multiplier by the ratio between the variance of
the protein after and before truncation.
Tests also indicate that when the solvent content is higher than 50%, the solvent multiplier needs to be made less negative than with lower solvent content. In a test case with significant data to 3 Å and a solvent content of 33%, the best results were obtained with "MULSOLV AUTO -1.6".
(default: 0.35 1)
Defines truncation levels.
trunc 0.05 0.95
will truncate the lowest and highest 5 percent of the protein area of the map. Tests strongly suggest that by truncating the lower 30 to 40% of the protein, major improvements of the phases can be obtained. It is likely that there is a relationship between the optimum level of truncation and the maximum resolution of the data. In test cases of crystals diffraction beyond 3 Å, the optimum lies between 30 and 40%.
(default: 1.31)
Ratio between the mean protein density and the mean solvent density. This
is used in conjunction with EXTRUDE.
(default: not extrude)
By specifying "EXTRUDE", very low resolution structure factors
will be reconstructed. If low resolution terms are missing or are not well
phased, the mean protein density will be almost equal to the mean solvent
density. If the density modification procedure is used to also reconstruct
missing terms (by using the program SIGMAA or FFT
to substitute Fc), a constant value (which can be negative) will be added
to the grid points in the solvent, adjusting the mean ratio between
protein and solvent to be as given by PTOS. It is assumed that
the lowest density found within the protein region is zero after adding
in an F000 term. The main function of this keyword is to prevent the inflation
of the mean protein density during iterative density modification caused
by truncating protein density on every cycle.
(default: operators from mapfile)
"O"-style crystallographic symmetry operators. If this keyword
is omitted, the symmetry operators from the input map are used.
(default: none)
This keyword only has a meaning when Solomon is removing overlap and generating
new masks. If this keyword is given, a mask will be written to disk which
defines the area of the asymmetric unit covered by all the other specified
masks. See INPUT AND OUTPUT section for information on mask
format.
A "mskin" keyword, defining the filename of an "O"-style mask or a CCP4 style mask. The "O" masks are similar in format and are ASCII files. This keyword is followed by the transformations of the mask producing the symmetry related copies ("trans" keyword). The transformation matrices are read from an ASCII file (see example below) and are in the 'O' style. However, Solomon can read these files with or without the normal 'O' data block header. Like in 'dm' the translation part is in Angstrom units. Do not forget to provide the unit symmetry operator too!!
If a "trans" keyword is followed by the "mskout" keyword, averaging will not be undertaken, but instead the masks will be checked for overlap, and where overlap occurs, this will be removed by dividing the common volume between the overlapping masks. The trimmed masks will be written to disk as specified by the filename following the "mskout" keyword. CCP4 masks will not need to be trimmed if generated from MAPMASK or NCSMASK. The output mask will have the same format as the input mask.
mskin r1.msk
trans unit.ncs
mskout r1trim.msk
trans r1tor3.msk
mskout r3trim.msk
No averaging will be undertaken (at least one "mskout" keyword was present in the command file).
Any overlap between the mask and any of its symmetry related copies (either crystallographic, non-crystallographic, or a combination of both) will be removed, and the resulting symmetry related masks will be written to disk with the specified filenames.
In addition, "O"-style non-crystallographic symmetry operators will be written to disk. Their filenames are constructed by replacing the extension of the new mask by "ncs%d", where "%d" is an integer, indicating which symmetry is described. The integer indicates the mask which will be generated by the symmetry operation:
r1trim.ncs0 : unity operator
r1trim.ncs1 : generates r3trim.msk from r1trim.msk
r3trim.ncs0 : generates r1trim.msk from r3trim.msk
r3trim.ncs1 : unity operator
Another example:
mskin r1trim.msk
trans r1trim.ncs0
trans r1trim.ncs1
mskin r3trim.msk
trans r3trim.ncs0
trans r3trim.ncs1
The density in "r1trim.msk" will be averaged with the density as defined by the symmetry operators "r1trim.ncs0" and "r1trim.ncs1". Likewise, the density within "r3trim.msk" will be averaged. The maps produced by averaging contain just the density local to the specified maps, and are on the same scale. Their filenames are constructed by replacing the extension ".msk" by ".map". So, the files "r1trim.map" and "r3trim.map" are produced.
Jan-Pieter Abrahams, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge. I/O subroutines modified by: Kevin Cowtan, University of York.