Thank you, Eric!  
I am still downloading PDB files through Bio.python. I am just interested in the overall distance distribution of residues, say Lys alpha carbon. NMR entries might end up over-representing due to their multiple models.  Thank you for pointing it out.  Is there a quick way to distinguish crystal structures from NMR structures?

Best,
Feixia

On Wed, 19 Aug 2015 14:17:35 -0400, Eric Pettersen <pett@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:

Hi Feixia,
You could certainly use Chimera to do that.  You need to know some Python.  Take a look at the Programmer’s Guide:

http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ProgrammersGuide/index.html

In particular, the “basic primer” discusses how to loop over files in a directory and do things to them one by one.
Here’s some example code for printing the lysine CA-CA distances for a single open file.  You could take that and move it into the loop described in the basic primer — customizing it as you wish…

from chimera import openModels, Molecule
# opening NMR files can produce multiple models, so use a loop...
for mol in openModels.list(modelTypes=[Molecule]):
lysCas = [a for a in mol.atoms if a.name == “CA” and a.residue.type == “LYS”]
for i, ca1 in enumerate(lysCas):
for ca2 in lysCas[i+1:]:
print mol.name, ca1, ca2, ca1.coord().distance(ca2.coord())

—Eric

Eric Pettersen
UCSF Computer Graphics Lab

On Aug 18, 2015, at 8:36 AM, Feixia <feixia.chu@unh.edu> wrote:

Hi there,

I am interested in retrieving distance information from large dataset in an automatic fashion.  For instance, can we use Chimera to get the distances between lysine alpha-carbons of current PDB entries.  Presumably, we can download all PDB structures on our local desktop, and just call functions one structure at a time.  I wonder if we can do that with Chimera.  Your advice will be highly appreciated.

Best,
Feixia