[BioPython] using Bio.PDB: fast way to get the maximum distance within a protein?

[Peter]

Christian Meesters wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Does anyone know a way to compute the maximum distance within a protein
> (perhaps using Bio.PDB) without calculating distances of all atom
> pairs? 

Are you thinking alpha-carbon to alpha-carbon distances, or using all atoms?

> I'm hoping to be just too blind to see an easy solution here ...

There should be some way to take advantage of the backbone links meaning 
lots of residues are constrained to be close to each other... Is it 
essential to get the largest pairwise distance, or would a local maximum do?

You could probably do some clever sampling, say doing all pairwise 
combination of every third residue, and then for those furthest apart 
including all the local residues... just thinking out loud.

Peter