Two Methods for Calculating the Size Distribution of Ferritin’s Outer Diameter

Ferritin is a kind of iron-storage protein widely found in animals and plants. The dynamic light scattering (Dynamic Light Scattering) method is used in the laboratory to determine the ferritin size. This paper presents two methods for calculating the outer diameter size distribution of ferritin, both of which assume that ferritin is approximately spherical. The ferritin data file was obtained from the PDB website and was calculated using the coordinate data of the amino acids to which the amino acids belong. The first method is based on the calculation of the sphere center; the second method is based on the method of the farthest distance atom pair. The outer diameter size distribution curves obtained by the two methods are basically consistent with the experimental methods. The paper also compares the calculation results and performance of the two methods. Both methods are versatile and can be used to calculate the size distribution of the globular proteins.