HBonds

Syntax:  hbonds {<boolean>}
         hbonds <value>

The RasMol hbond command is used to represent the hydrogen bonding of the protein molecule's backbone. This information is useful in assessing the protein's secondary structure. Hydrogen bonds are represented as either dotted lines or cylinders between the donor and acceptor residues. The first time the hbond command is used, the program searches the structure of the molecule to find hydrogen bonded residues and reports the number of bonds to the user. The command hbonds on displays the selected `bonds' as dotted lines, and the hbonds off turns off their display. The colour of hbond objects may be changed by the colour hbond command. Initially, each hydrogen bond has the colours of its connected atoms.

By default the dotted lines are drawn between the accepting oxygen and the donating nitrogen. By using the set hbonds command the alpha carbon positions of the appropriate residues may be used instead. This is especially useful when examining proteins in backbone representation.