title: Use of circular variance to quantify the deviation of a macromolecule from the spherical shape.
abstract: It is shown that the extent of deviation of a molecular shape from spherical can be characterized by comparing the distribution of the circular variances, a measure originally proposed to quantify angular spread, of the vectors from each atom to the rest of the molecule to the circular variance of a collection of atoms filling the unit sphere. Different measures for quantifying the difference between distribution are proposed and compared.
authors.affiliation: Department of Structural and Chemical Biology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA. Mihaly.Mezei@mssm.edu ; Tel.: +1-212-659-5475.
authors.forename: Mihaly
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mezei
keywords: Sphericity; accessible surface; circular variance; moments