DichroWeb, a website for calculating protein secondary structure from circular dichroism spectroscopic data

Protein Sci. 2022 Jan;31(1):37-46. doi: 10.1002/pro.4153. Epub 2021 Jul 21.

Abstract

Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is a widely-used method for characterizing the secondary structures of proteins. The well-established and highly used analysis website, DichroWeb (located at: http://dichroweb.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/html/home.shtml) enables the facile quantitative determination of helix, sheet, and other secondary structure contents of proteins based on their CD spectra. DichroWeb includes a range of reference datasets and algorithms, plus graphical and quantitative methods for determining the quality of the analyses produced. This article describes the current website content, usage and accessibility, as well as the many upgraded features now present in this highly popular tool that was originally created nearly two decades ago.

Keywords: bioinformatics; calculations; circular dichroism spectroscopy; data analyses; disordered structure; protein secondary structure; reference datasets; soluble and membrane proteins; α-helix; β-sheet.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Circular Dichroism
  • Databases, Protein*
  • Protein Structure, Secondary
  • Proteins / chemistry*
  • Proteins / genetics
  • Software*

Substances

  • Proteins