Hi Leif, a few comments: - occupancy, by definition, cannot be negative: "Occupancy is the fraction of molecules in the crystal in which a given atom occupies the position specified in the model" (where did I copy this from?.. anyway you get the idea!). - We had a discussion with Marat about this at some point. If I remember correctly, files out of nCNS with negative occupancies are sort of temporary files or the likes, and there is a script that converts them into files that do not have negative occupancies and those files need to go to PDB deposition. This is my vague recollection.. - Rfactor is a global metric that is unlikely to be sensitive to a change in a parameter of one or a few atoms, unless these atoms represent a significant fraction of the whole structure (for example, if your structure consists of three atoms, and you vary an occupancy of one of thee atoms, then yes, Rfactor will "see" it). - In phenix.refine exchangeable H/D sites always: a) have the same position, b) same B-factor, and c) their fractional (0<=q<=1) occupancies add up to one. If you see something different, please report a bug to me (a reproducible example that illustrates the problem). All the best, Pavel On 12/4/14 6:18 PM, Leif Hanson wrote:
I have a question on these occupancies with respect to labile H atoms. During the exchange process, we assume that the ratio of H to D at a given atom will vary from 1 to 0 as deuteration increases. However, since the scattering length varies from negative to positive (-0.3 to 0.6 fm), does this enhance the ability to determine the occupancy? In nCNS this shows up in the q column as -0.5 for H where 1 is a D. For Phenix where both H and D for a given site are listed, the q values vary from 0 to 1, although the fractional values don't necessarily add to 1. I disremember whether the q value goes negative in Shelx. To follow on what Ed said, if one assumes that half of the atoms in a structure are H, and 1/3 of those are labile, then up to 1/6 of the structure has some variability for q. If one examines a His residue and the scattering for one proton position is zero does this mean nothing is there, or does it mean that it has 0.66 occupancy for His? Would I really expect to see a change on R at this site with either no proton, or 0.66 H? Leif