Sample select=" " Commands

Apologies to Eric Martz, whose page I ripped most of this off from...

Every atom in a PDB file has a serial number - look at a PDB file using WordPad sometime and you'll see exactly what I mean.  These number also show up in some published papers when a PDB file is being worked with.

select="atomno = 131"  a single atom
select="atomno 217, atomno = 1426"  two atoms
select="atomno >= 195 and atomno <= 277"  a range of atom serial numbers

If you want to select all of the atoms of a particular element in the molecule, you can do that, too...  (Use the full name, not the two-letter abbreviation)

select="magnesium"   Selects every Mg atom in the molecule
select=" iron, sulfur"  Selects every Fe atom and every S atom in the molecule

Atom PDB names...
PDB files name each atom in a standardized way (up to 4 characters). Alpha-carbons are CA, beta-carbons CB, and so forth through CG, CD, CE, CZ, CH (gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta). Other examples are N7 (7th nitrogen in a residue), O2P (second oxygen on a phosphorus), OE2 (second oxygen on an epsilon carbon), HD1 (1st hydrogen on a delta carbon). To find out an atom's PDB name, click on it. Its name is reported as the first word following "Atom:". You can select, for example:

select="*.cg"   all carbons in gamma position
select="lys.cg"   all lysine gamma-carbons
select=":a.cg"   all gamma-carbons in chain A
select="lys:a.cg"   all lysine gamma-carbons in chain A
select="27-42:a.cg"   gamma-carbons in chain A residues 27 through 42
select="*.h?"   all hydrogens with 2-character names
select="*.h???"   all hydrogens

Chains...
Each polymer chain (polypeptide, nucleic acid, carbohydrate, etc.) has a single character name (letter or digit). In a select command, this character must be prefixed with a colon or an asterisk to signify that the letter represents a chain. Most ATOM records in the PDB file are members of a chain; sometimes all. Whether or not ligands of a chain are given the same letter as the chain to which they bind, a different chain letter, or no chain letter, varies. HETATM (hetero) atom records are considered to be a "chain" only in the sense that they are all assigned the same color by the "color chain" command. To find out what chain an atom belongs to, click on it.
You could select:

select=":d"   all atoms in chain D
select="*d"   all atoms in chain D, again

select=":d, :e"   all atoms in chains D or E
select="glu:2"   all glutamates in chain 2