Methods to Estimate the Conformation of Proteins and Polypeptides from Circular Dichroism Data

Circular dichroism (CD) is an excellent method for analyzing the conformation of proteins and peptides in solution. This review compares various methods of obtaining structural information from CD data and the advantages and pitfalls of each technique are detailed. Among the topics discussed are how does the wave-length range of data acquisition affect the precision of the determination of protein conformation, how precisely must the protein concentration be determined for each method to give reliable answers, and what computer resources are necessary to use each method.