Schematic drawings of protein structures

Abstract

A schematic drawing summarizes the overall features of a structure in a quickly graspable and relatively memorable form. It follows that there are two crucial and nontrivial tasks of a schematic drawing. The first is to portray the overall organization of the structure rather than a collection of details; for example, one should try to draw a β- sheet rather than drawing β-strands. The second major task is to communicate accurate three-dimensional information, by utilizing all available monocular depth cues and, where possible, by mimicking the appearance of a binocular image. There are many different but related types of schematics, for example, for myoglobin, carbonic anhydrase, thioredoxin, immunoglobulin, PGM, and tRNA. Along with the specific methods explained, it could also add or substitute conventions from some of those other representations if they were especially suitable for showing the features of a given structure. For example, in showing large multisubunit structures it is helpful to simplify further to cylindrical helices and entire β-sheets or β-barrels.