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The CCP4 program suite

The Collaborative Computational Project No. 4 (CCP4) is an initiative of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council for the development, maintenance and distribution of a software suite for protein crystallography. Applications include data reduction, scaling programs, Patterson search and refinement, isomorphous and molecular replacement, MAD phasing, phase improvement (density modification), structure refinement and presentation of results. The suite is ported to most UNIX systems, including LINUX, as well as VMS. The Suite included 130 programs, and was used at around 400 sites worldwide.

A central part of the suite is a library of routines commonly used in crystallographic applications and these may be useful in non-CCP4 programs (see http://www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP4/dev/templates/templates.html).

Version 3.5 will contain the following new programs: *DYNDOM: Program to determine domains, hinge axes and hinge bending residues in proteins where two conformations are available (S. Hayward), *MTZMADMOD: Jiffy for converting between F+/F- and F/D, *FINDNCS: Find out NCS operations from heavy atom sites (G. Lu), *WATNCS: Pick waters which follow NCSs and sort out to NCS asymmetric unit (G. Lu), *TOP: An automatic structure comparison program and web server (G. Lu).

The suite is available free to non-profit institutions, subject to a completed license form being returned to the CCP4 secretary. A charge is made to commercial users who should contact the CCP4 secretary at ccp4@dl.ac.uk to make arrangements. All charges for the suite are used to fund CCP4 activities. Further details on obtaining the Suite can be found on the CCP4 web site http://www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP4/main.html.

Inquiries may be sent to the staff at Daresbury Lab, (M. Winn, A. Ashton, P. Briggs and S. Bailey) email: ccp4@dl.ac.uk.

Martyn Winn, Daresbury
from BCA Newsletter, March 1999
22 July 2008