Have you ever wanted to view molecules in high-fidelity from the comfort of your own web browser? Well now you can thanks to the Bio/Nano group at Autodesk Research.
Merry Wang from the group explains that the Bio/Nano group is building on Autodesk's expertise as a toolmaker for designers of things like buildings, cars and roads. This group is making tools to design living things. They're starting with a tool to visualize complex data at the nanoscale.
In the image below, you can see a sample of the viewer displaying a Recombinant Hemoglobin molecule.
Users of the Molecule Viewer can bring in their own custom data or draw from the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB). Here's a view of the Crystal Structure of Human Fibrogen.
Here's an alternate view but instead of looking at the structure in Ribbon mode, we are looking at a combination of Ball & Stick with Surface display. The highlighted portion starting at the top left is Chain B.
Each display mode has a number of options such as chain, residue and bfactor as you can see below in this view of Crystal Structure of the full-length Human RAGE Extracellular Domain (aka 4lp5) - the RCSB PDB Molecule of the Month of June.
The UI is nicely laid out and allows you to explore the Chains, Residues and Atoms of the molecule quickly and easily.
Sounds exciting, right? Head on over to Autodesk Labs and try it out! You can also check out the Wet Lab Accelerator for assistance in running your tests.