Web3DMol: interactive protein structure visualization based on WebGL

Maoxiang Shi; Juntao Gao; Michael Q Zhang

doi:10.1093/nar/gkx383

Web3DMol: interactive protein structure visualization based on WebGL

Nucleic Acids Res. 2017 Jul 3;45(W1):W523-W527. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkx383.

Authors

Maoxiang Shi¹, Juntao Gao², Michael Q Zhang^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Basic Medical Sciences, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
² MOE Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics Division and Center for Synthetic & Systems Biology, TNLIST, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
³ Department of Biological Sciences, Center for Systems Biology, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080-3021, USA.

Abstract

A growing number of web-based databases and tools for protein research are being developed. There is now a widespread need for visualization tools to present the three-dimensional (3D) structure of proteins in web browsers. Here, we introduce our 3D modeling program-Web3DMol-a web application focusing on protein structure visualization in modern web browsers. Users submit a PDB identification code or select a PDB archive from their local disk, and Web3DMol will display and allow interactive manipulation of the 3D structure. Featured functions, such as sequence plot, fragment segmentation, measure tool and meta-information display, are offered for users to gain a better understanding of protein structure. Easy-to-use APIs are available for developers to reuse and extend Web3DMol. Web3DMol can be freely accessed at http://web3dmol.duapp.com/, and the source code is distributed under the MIT license.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Computer Graphics
Internet
Models, Molecular
Protein Conformation*
Software*
User-Computer Interface