The absolute and relative solvent accessibility of each residue or side chain in a structure can be calculated using the program NACCESS. Relative accessibility values give the accessible surface of a residue relative to the accessibility of that same residue in the context of an extended poly-Ala-chain to correct for the different surface areas of different amino acid side chains. The solvent accessibility macros allow to convert the numeric values for the relative solvent accessibility into a color code
Color Code:
0 % -10 %: buried
10 % - 25 %
25 % - 50%
50 % - 75 %
75 % - 100 %
> 100 %: highly exposed