title: Analysis of structural variability within two-dimensional biological crystals by a combination of patch averaging techniques and self organizing maps.
abstract: We study in this work the use of self organizing maps to analyze the structural variability that can be found along two-dimensional crystals of biological macromolecules. Small areas of the crystals, termed "patches" by previous researchers, are used to obtain local average images that are then used as the input of a Self Organizing Map. This procedure allows for a fast and accurate image classification. Multivariate Statistical Analysis is then used on the resulting code vectors producing a very condensed data representation. This methodology is applied to previously studied crystals of bacteriophage phi 29 p10 connector, finding a crystalline heterogeneity probably associated to multilayers in some areas of the crystal.
authors.affiliation: Centro Nacional de Biotecnología-CSIC, Universidad Autónoma, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Fernández
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Carazo
mesh_terms: D017103:Bacillus Phages / Q000648:ultrastructure; D003461:Crystallography; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted