This is an initial version of the continuous DSSP (DSSPcont) web site. It is mirrored at CUBIC in the USA, here. The site is based on the work presented in:

Continuous secondary structure correlates with protein motion
Claus A.F. Andersen, Arthur G. Palmer, Soren Brunak and Burkhard Rost
The DSSP program automates protein secondary structure assignment, using an algorithm that assigns every residue to one of eight states. However, any discrete assignment is incomplete, because the continuum of thermal fluctuations cannot be described. Hence, a continuous assignment of secondary structure that replaces 'static' by 'dynamic' states is proposed. Technically, continuous DSSP assignments were obtained as weighted averages over ten DSSP assignments with different hydrogen bond thresholds. The continuous DSSP assignments calculated from a single set of coordinates reflect the structural variations due to thermal fluctuations. We anticipate that continuous secondary structure assignments may impact future protein structure comparison and prediction.

Planned services:

• Given a PDB identifier retrieve the DSSPcont output.
  
• Given a PDB file retrieve the DSSPcont output.
  
• Retrieval of the DSSPcont output for all PDB files.
  
• Downloading the DSSPcont program.
  
• Downloading the PERL package handling DSSPcont output.
  
  

The DSSPcont output can originate from one X-ray structure, the average over all NMR models for a given structure or DSSPcont output for a single model.
We can presently provide the DSSPcont output for an example, and in an internal format for the entire data set (slow! 4MB, gzip) used in our study. The PDB id's for the mixed, X-ray and NMR data sets used can also be retrieved.