The extent to which the atomic fluctuations/displacements of a system are
correlated with one another can be assessed by examining the magnitude
of all pairwise cross-correlation coefficients (see McCammon and Harvey,
1986).
This function returns a matrix of all atom-wise cross-correlations
whose elements, Cij, may be displayed in a graphical representation
frequently termed a dynamical cross-correlation map, or DCCM.
If Cij = 1 the fluctuations of atoms i and j are completely correlated
(same period and same phase), if Cij = -1 the fluctuations of atoms i
and j are completely anticorrelated (same period and opposite phase),
and if Cij = 0 the fluctuations of i and j are not correlated.
Typical characteristics of DCCMs include a line of strong
cross-correlation along the diagonal, cross-correlations emanating
from the diagonal, and off-diagonal cross-correlations. The high
diagonal values occur where i = j, where Cij is always equal to
1.00. Positive correlations emanating from the diagonal indicate
correlations between contiguous residues, typically within a secondary
structure element or other tightly packed unit of structure.
Typical secondary structure patterns include a triangular pattern for
helices and a plume for strands. Off-diagonal positive and negative
correlations may indicate potentially interesting correlations between
domains of non-contiguous residues.
cov2dccm
function calculates the N-by-N cross-correlation matrix
directly from a 3N-by-3N variance-covariance matrix.
If method = "pearson"
, the conventional Pearson's inner-product
correlaiton calculation will be invoked, in which only the diagnol of
each residue-residue covariance sub-matrix is considered.
If method = "lmi"
, then the linear mutual information
cross-correlation will be calculated. ‘LMI’ considers both
diagnol and off-diagnol entries in sub-matrices, and so even grabs the
correlation of residues moving on orthognal directions. (See more details
in lmi
.)