Figure 17.2.3.6 

Hydrophobicity mapped onto a molecular surface. A spherical-harmonic approximation of the actin monomer solvent-excluded surface is shown. (a) Vertex colouring of a medium-mesh tessellated surface. The hydrophobicity colour scale is shown above. Notice that the colours blend between vertices, producing colour artifacts in relationship to the property scale. (b) The same medium-mesh representation as in (a) but using a property-based (one-dimensional) texture map, applying the same colour scale. Notice that the boundaries between the colours are distinct, even when they intersect vertices. Here the property value is interpolated. (c) A coarser mesh showing the same texture-mapping technique used in (b). Since the properties are only sampled at the vertices of the mesh, the finer details of the mapping are lost at this coarse triangulation. (d) A two-dimensional texture map created as a `Mercator-like' projection in spherical coordinates (θ, φ) from the same hydrophobicity scale used in (a)–(c). (e) The 2-D texture map shown in (d) mapped onto the medium-mesh actin surface. Notice that the linear nature of the interpolation seen in (b) using the same mesh is no longer present. (f) The same 2-D texture map applied to the coarse-mesh surface of actin. Notice that, unlike in (c), the detail of the texture map is preserved independent of the mesh.