Anisotropy and anharmonicity of atomic fluctuations in proteins: implications for X-ray analysis

The effects of anisotropy and anharmonicity of the atomic fluctuations on the results of crystallographic refinement of proteins are examined. Atomic distribution functions from a molecular dynamics simulation for lysozyme are introduced into a real-space (electron density) refinement procedure for individual atoms. Several models for the atomic probability distributions are examined. When isotropic, harmonic motion is assumed, the largest discrepancies between the true first moments (means) and second moments (B factors) of the positions calculated from the dynamics and the fitted values occur for probability densities with multiple peaks. The refined mean is at the center of the largest peak, and the refined B factor is slightly larger than that of the largest peak, unless the distance between the peaks is small compared to the peak width. The resulting values are often significantly different from the true first and second moments of the distribution. To improve the results, alternate conformations, rather than anharmonic corrections, should be included.