- Chimera-users - RBVI Mailing Lists

Re: [Chimera-users] Automatic struts for 3D printing?
by Hurt, Darrell (NIH/NIAID) [E] 23 Aug '13

23 Aug '13

Ask and it shall be given! Thanks for the explanation! -- Darrell Hurt, Ph.D. Section Head, Computational Biology Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) OCICB/OSMO/OD/NIAID/NIH 31 Center Drive, Room 3B62B, MSC 2135 Bethesda, MD 20892-2135 Office: 301-402-0095 Mobile: 301-758-3559 Web: BCBB Home Page<http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/odoffices/omo/ocicb/Pages/bcbb.…> Twitter: @niaidbioit<https://twitter.com/niaidbioit> Disclaimer: The information in this e-mail and any of its attachments is confidential and may contain sensitive information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage devices. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shall not accept liability for any statements made that are sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of the NIAID by one of its representatives. From: Tom Goddard <goddard(a)sonic.net<mailto:goddard@sonic.net>> Date: Friday, August 23, 2013 1:44 PM To: Darrell Hurt <darrellh(a)niaid.nih.gov<mailto:darrellh@niaid.nih.gov>> Cc: "chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu>" <chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu>> Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] Automatic struts for 3D printing? Hi Darrell, You can get struts between a protein and ligand with the current command -- just include the ligand atoms in the argument to the struts command. For example, open 2ghb struts @CA|ligand&element.C This is just a fancier atom specification that says consider atoms named CA or ligand carbon atoms. Here's a picture of the result. [cid:E793C582-C88D-4680-B08B-DC92C52D671B@cgl.ucsf.edu] Another tip. Yesterday I added command "~struts" that removes all struts or "~struts ligand" that removes all struts involving ligand atoms. You can use any atom specifier and remove the struts to those atoms. Tom On Aug 23, 2013, at 10:27 AM, "Hurt, Darrell (NIH/NIAID) [E]" wrote: Hi Tom, I've been playing with the command and it works very well. I really like the "replace" feature for trying several strut options without having to delete the previous ones. Thanks Elaine! You've already given me much. Thank you! One additional feature that we've thought of would be automatically create these kinds of struts to small molecule ligands. The way I thought to do this would be to use the same algorithm you've already implemented, but extend it to check if a ligand is present. If so, then struts would be created from the designated macromolecular atoms (@CA or @P) to the "heavy" (non-hydrogen) atoms of the ligand(s). I think that your "loop" parameter would prevent too many struts from being created. This would make the algorithm even more automated! Thanks! Darrell -- Darrell Hurt, Ph.D. Section Head, Computational Biology Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) OCICB/OSMO/OD/NIAID/NIH 31 Center Drive, Room 3B62B, MSC 2135 Bethesda, MD 20892-2135 Office: 301-402-0095 Mobile: 301-758-3559 Web: BCBB Home Page<http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/odoffices/omo/ocicb/Pages/bcbb.…> Twitter: @niaidbioit<https://twitter.com/niaidbioit> Disclaimer: The information in this e-mail and any of its attachments is confidential and may contain sensitive information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage devices. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shall not accept liability for any statements made that are sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of the NIAID by one of its representatives. From: Tom Goddard <goddard(a)sonic.net<mailto:goddard@sonic.net><mailto:goddard@sonic.net>> Date: Thursday, August 22, 2013 3:46 PM To: Darrell Hurt <darrellh(a)niaid.nih.gov<mailto:darrellh@niaid.nih.gov><mailto:darrellh@niaid.nih.gov>> Cc: "chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu>" <chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu>> Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] Automatic struts for 3D printing? Hi Darrell, I improved the struts command today so it automatically replaces the previous struts if you run it a second time with the same set of atoms but different parameter values. This avoids having to delete the first set of struts with model panel -- much easier to use. Will be in tonight's daily build. Improvement suggested by Elaine Meng. If you really do want to keep multiple sets of struts for the same atoms use the struts command option "replace false". Tom On Aug 21, 2013, at 2:27 PM, "Hurt, Darrell (NIH/NIAID) [E]" wrote: Hi Tom, OMG! You're amazing! I'll certainly give this a try and let you know how it works. I really like the "loop" parameter. It seems more robust and will produce more evenly spaced struts than the second "distance" parameter I tried to explain. Thank you! Darrell -- Darrell Hurt, Ph.D. Section Head, Computational Biology Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) OCICB/OSMO/OD/NIAID/NIH 31 Center Drive, Room 3B62B, MSC 2135 Bethesda, MD 20892-2135 Office: 301-402-0095 Mobile: 301-758-3559 Web: BCBB Home Page<http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/odoffices/omo/ocicb/Pages/bcbb.…> Twitter: @niaidbioit<https://twitter.com/niaidbioit> Disclaimer: The information in this e-mail and any of its attachments is confidential and may contain sensitive information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage devices. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shall not accept liability for any statements made that are sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of the NIAID by one of its representatives. From: Tom Goddard Date: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 5:06 PM To: Darrell Hurt Cc: "chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu>" <chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu>> Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] Automatic struts for 3D printing? Hi Darrell, I added a "struts" command to Chimera -- in tonight's daily builds. I've attached your picture of hemagglutinin with struts and a similar picture made with the new struts command and also a picture of a tRNA (4tna) with a small number of struts made in Chimera. [cid:2AFCE3A1-824B-4430-8153-A5616DAE2C5E@cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:A5616DAE2C5E@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:2AFCE3A1-824B-4430-8153-A5616DAE2C5E@cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:A5616DAE2C5E@cgl.ucsf.edu>>][cid:54ACB2C8-EF27-4A47-A8B0-8718D93CAF28@cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:EF27-4A47-A8B0-8718D93CAF28@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:54ACB2C8-EF27-4A47-A8B0-8718D93CAF28@cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:EF27-4A47-A8B0-8718D93CAF28@cgl.ucsf.edu>>] [cid:7CBA5018-1ED2-48AD-BD7B-5D6F71E439C4@cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:BD7B-5D6F71E439C4@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:7CBA5018-1ED2-48AD-BD7B-5D6F71E439C4@cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:BD7B-5D6F71E439C4@cgl.ucsf.edu>>][cid:960E041D-8A30-4F42-8DB2-28758F7F411E@cgl.ucsf.edu<http://cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:960E041D-8A30-4F42-8DB2-28758F7F411E@cgl.ucsf.edu<http://cgl.ucsf.edu>>] The Chimera command for the hemagglutinin model struts is struts @CA length 7 loop 30 I decided to try a different algorithm in Chimera for adding struts from the one in the Jmol code. The Chimera struts command uses two parameters. It finds all pairs of C-alpha atoms within a distance of 7 Angstroms of each other. Then it considers those from shortest to longest distances. It adds a strut if the two atoms the strut would join are more than 30 Angstroms away via bonded connections. Basically it adds struts up to a given maximum length so that C-alphas are connected via bonds and struts by no more than a maximum loop length. The maximum strut length (7 Angstroms) and maximum loop length (30 Angstroms) are the two parameters. For the tRNA model I used 15 and 80 and use P atoms instead of CA atoms (command "struts @P length 15 loop 80"). Here's roughly what the Jmol code does, that I decided not to copy 1) make struts short (less than 7 Angstroms), 2) make struts join residues at least 6 residues apart in polymer, 3) space out struts, ends of different struts no closer than 6 residues, 4) include as many struts as possible meeting spacing and length constraints, 5) put a strut within 3 residues of the end of each polymer. The exact details of how it does this would take a long explanation -- which is my main reason for not copying it. The algorithm of the Chimera struts command is easily and precisely described above and produced reasonable struts for the half dozen test cases I tried. But it may prove not as good as the Jmol approach -- experience will tell -- and I can change it if needed. Here is and example using all available strut command options struts @CA length 7 loop 30 radius 0.75 color blue name struts_7_30 fat true model #5 Any set of atoms can be specified as strut end points, radius is the strut cylinder radius, color is the strut color, name is the name of the pseudo-bond model created for the struts (struts can be hidden using Model Panel), fattenRibbon sets a fatter ribbon style better for printing (can adjust as desired with Ribbon Style Editor, menu Tools / Depiction), modelId is the model number you want for the strut pseudobonds. Struts can span multiple models, or be restricted to just a part (e.g. one chain) of a model. The command will get documented in the Chimera User's Guide. Tom On Aug 16, 2013, at 7:02 PM, "Hurt, Darrell (NIH/NIAID) [E]" wrote: Hi Tom, Thanks. This is some of our best stuff. For our material, the struts are vitally important or the whole thing crumbles. We use so many struts that a script is really important to doing this efficiently. I have no idea how it will work in a monochrome plastic printer. However, there are some plastic printers emerging on the market now that can print in two colors plus a support material. That might help with distinguishing between structure and strut. One idea is to print both the struts and the building supports in the same material and then dissolving all that, leaving just the protein. You're right about the struts being too short. They would be pointless along a helix. So I think there is a hard-coded minimum strut distance to prevent struts within the helix, but a user-settable parameter for the maximum strut distance. This is especially important in protein complexes. The pink and baby blue blobs are glycosylation on the surface of the proteins. These are modeled in using the glycoprotein builder: http://glycam.ccrc.uga.edu/ccrc/gp/index.jsp?tool=crystallography&option=ff 99:glycam06 If you think this is cool, you've got to check out what Kawakami Masaru is doing with 3D printed molecules: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVtE_AS3jbI http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4739961 Thanks! Darrell -- Darrell Hurt, Ph.D. Section Head, Computational Biology Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) OCICB/OSMO/OD/NIAID/NIH 31 Center Drive, Room 3B62B, MSC 2135 Bethesda, MD 20892-2135 Office: 301-402-0095 Mobile: 301-758-3559Web: BCBB Home Page <http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/odoffices/omo/ocicb/Pages/bcbb .aspx#niaid_inlineNav_Anchor> Twitter: @niaidbioit <https://twitter.com/niaidbioit> Disclaimer: The information in this e-mail and any of its attachments is confidential and may contain sensitive information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage devices. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shall not accept liability for any statements made that are sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of the NIAID by one of its representatives. On 8/16/13 8:46 PM, "Tom Goddard" wrote: Hi Darrell, Your plastic models are super cool. I'm jealous -- we don't have a color printer. I had no idea you were adding so many struts. I'm afraid it would look less attractive in one color. I see that some models are ribbon only and some have the residues depicted as surface blobs -- none of your pictured models used spheres and cylinders for atoms and bonds. That helps avoid confusing the struts for molecular bonds. I'm a puzzled by your dozens of pink blobs in image 3 and 7 and cyan blobs in image 9 in each case connected by lots of sticks. They look like individual residues but are too far apart to be a polypeptide I think -- maybe many copies of a small ligand? The algorithm for placing struts sounds quite simple. Chimera has ribbon splines that go exactly through the C-alphas, and can also join side chains to a ribbon even when the C-alpha is not on the ribbon. So I think that won't be a problem. The Jmol strut code I looked at looked more complex than what you describe. If it simply chose short distance struts wouldn't you get a bunch of unneeded struts say within one alpha helix, and maybe lack some long range struts that are needed to hold everything together? In any case, if we come up with an algorithm, or just want to copy the Jmol code, it looks very easy to add to Chimera. I can probably do an implementation in half a day. The main thing is to figure out exactly what the algorithm should do. Maybe I can put something in next week. Tom On Aug 16, 2013, at 5:16 PM, "Hurt, Darrell (NIH/NIAID) [E]" wrote: Hi Tom, I've been printing ribbon/cartoon and surface representations of proteins and nucleic acids for many years using a Z Corp machine. I've also done some "ball-and-stick" and "VDW-sphere" kinds of prints. Often we print substrates in "stick" mode and connect the sticks to the ribbon using manually-placed struts. We will continue to use our Z Printer, but we are also buying a "desktop" 3D printer that more people can afford. It is an "FDM" printer similar to the uPrinter your webpages describe. The algorithm used by the George Phillips script is a little different (and perhaps simpler) than the one you describe. It has two parameters: (1) the maximum length of a strut and (2) the minimum closeness of any two struts. The second parameter is a little funky; I'll describe it below. The script first identifies all pairs of C-alphas (or pairs of initial phosphates on the backbone for nucleic acids). Then it creates "pseudobonds" (the struts) between all of those pairs which conform to the maximum length parameter. The next step is to cull the list of pseudobonds according to the minimum distance parameter so that you don't get struts everywhere. Here's where it gets kind of funky because I don't know how this distance is calculated. Either it is calculated from the starting end of a pseudobond (which is what I expect from what I can see of the results of the script) or it does it from center/centroid of the pseudobond. The script also adjusts some parameters to thicken the ribbons, sticks, etc. and increase the triangle count of the exported mesh. This usually works great, but there is one little problem because the struts are calculated to put the ends of the struts at the C-alpha positions. For helices, this usually isn't a problem because the helix ribbon/cartoon goes through the C-alpha position. But for strands which are drawn on a spline of the C-alphas, the struts sometimes either go through or do not reach the ribbon, making the struts useless. Using some standard tools in PyMOL, I force the ribbon to go through the C-alpha positions everywhere there is a strut terminus. In this way, the ribbon and the ends of the struts correspond and the print is strengthened without sacrificing the aesthetics of the splined ribbon. I've attached the results of this script for both the mesh and the actual print (the "ribbon.jpg" and "ribbon.png" images). Of course, printing in monochrome plastic will be different, but that's what we're hoping to experiment with. I've also attached a few other pictures of our prints. George and I have discussed sharing his script with a wider audience or even publishing some kind of technical note about it. He seems willing to share it with certain limitations. Maybe we can all write something together if we build it into Chimera. We might be able to do it internally, but I would have to get my developers more familiar with the internals of Chimera first. I welcome any efforts you or others might make. Thanks, Darrell -- Darrell Hurt, Ph.D. Section Head, Computational Biology Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) OCICB/OSMO/OD/NIAID/NIH 31 Center Drive, Room 3B62B, MSC 2135 Bethesda, MD 20892-2135 Office: 301-402-0095 Mobile: 301-758-3559Web: BCBB Home Page <http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/odoffices/omo/ocicb/Pages/bc bb .aspx#niaid_inlineNav_Anchor> Twitter: @niaidbioit <https://twitter.com/niaidbioit> Disclaimer: The information in this e-mail and any of its attachments is confidential and may contain sensitive information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage devices. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shall not accept liability for any statements made that are sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of the NIAID by one of its representatives. On 8/16/13 6:14 PM, "Tom Goddard" wrote: Hi Darrell, Here are some of the molecule models we have printed in plastic. http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/Outreach/technotes/ModelGallery/index.html and a description of the printer we used http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/Outreach/technotes/uprint.html Chimera does not currently have any tool to automatically add struts, although I've done this by hand in Chimera. For instance the heptatis B virus pentamer on the above web page had part of an icosahedral cage made from cylinders underneath it to hold the proteins on the virus surface together. One thing you'll see is that all our printed molecules came from surface depictions in Chimera (made with molmap command). I'm not sure if we successfully printed and ball and stick models via STL or VRML. We tried years ago and I recall them falling apart because where the spheres and cylinders intersected it put no plastic. Basically an atom sphere and bond cylinder are two surfaces and for points inside two surfaces (or any even number of surfaces I think) the printer places no plastic. So overlapped cylinders and spheres didn't hold together. This seems to be a printer driver issue -- how it takes a surface and makes a solid out of it. I don't know that we've tried with our newer printers at UCSF -- maybe it works now. Have you successfully printed ball and stick models exported from Chimera? What kind of printer? Now about automatically adding struts -- probably would not be hard. The struts code I saw online http://idp1.force.cs.is.nagoya-u.ac.jp/jmol/src/org/jmol/modelsetbio/Al ph aPolymer.java didn't have a clear description of the algorithm the use, but it would just take an hour to study it. I could see aiming to add struts that 1) are cylinders between atoms, 2) are short, 3) make the whole model one connected piece, 4) make every contiguous N (50) residues connected in at least 3 places (2 probably being continuations before and after and one being a crossbridge) to other residues for rigidity, 5) not put connections at the ends where they would be easily confused for real biological connections, 6) struts should not look like real bonds -- maybe make them fatter or better square cross-section. Actually that rigidity constraint is more complex -- probably don't want to have two large pieces connected to each other through only one bond. I recall printing some ribbon models in ABS plastic with ribbon cross-section pretty small -- half a centimeter. With 100 residues and no cross bridges the model is very flexible and easy to break. Could you provide a picture of a ball and stick model with struts to give a better idea of what you are shooting for? Tom On Aug 16, 2013, at 2:32 PM, "Hurt, Darrell (NIH/NIAID) [E]" wrote: Hi everyone, We are assembling an open data portal or "exchange" for producing "ready-to-3D-print" files for biological molecules, EM data, and other imaging data using some automated pipelines. A little bit more on our project can be found here: http://www.hhs.gov/open/initiatives/ignite/3d-printing-exchange.html A few years ago this came up on the "dev" discussion board: http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/pipermail/chimera-dev/2011/000800.html In the email thread above, it mentions a script by George Phillips called "struts.py" that was modified for use in RasMol. I am familiar with his version of this script for PyMOL. It works very well and I have been using it for years. However, the VRML from PyMOL is sometimes buggy. I like the exports from Chimera much better, including the X3D2VRML and X3D2STL utilities. If I could get the same functionality of this "struts" script in Chimera, that would be one less thing I need to go to PyMOL for (the list is getting shorter and shorter!). We're looking at doing it here, but I would welcome any contribution from the Chimera community if something already exists. Do you have anything? Is this script something of interest? Anyone interested in contributing to our "exchange" database/web portal? I would love any feedback you might have. Thanks, Darrell -- Darrell Hurt, Ph.D. Section Head, Computational Biology Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) OCICB/OSMO/OD/NIAID/NIH 31 Center Drive, Room 3B62B, MSC 2135 Bethesda, MD 20892-2135 Office: 301-402-0095 Mobile: 301-758-3559 Web: BCBB Home Page<http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/odoffices/omo/ocicb/Pa ge s/bcbb.aspx#niaid_inlineNav_Anchor> Twitter: @niaidbioit<https://twitter.com/niaidbioit> Disclaimer: The information in this e-mail and any of its attachments is confidential and may contain sensitive information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage devices. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shall not accept liability for any statements made that are sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of the NIAID by one of its representatives. _______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users <ribbon.png><ribbon.jpg><3D-print-4317.jpg><3D-print-4075.jpg><3D-print-4 119.jpg><3D-print-4169.jpg><3D-print-4275.jpg><3D-print-4145.jpg><3D-prin t-4347.jpg>_______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users _______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users <darrell_hemagglutinin.jpg><chimera_hemagglutinin.jpg><4tna_15_80_model.jpg><4tna_15_80_print.jpg>_______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu><mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users _______________________________________________ Chimera-users mailing list Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu<mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users

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Automatic struts for 3D printing?
by Hurt, Darrell (NIH/NIAID) [E] 23 Aug '13

23 Aug '13

Hi everyone, We are assembling an open data portal or "exchange" for producing "ready-to-3D-print" files for biological molecules, EM data, and other imaging data using some automated pipelines. A little bit more on our project can be found here: http://www.hhs.gov/open/initiatives/ignite/3d-printing-exchange.html A few years ago this came up on the "dev" discussion board: http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/pipermail/chimera-dev/2011/000800.html In the email thread above, it mentions a script by George Phillips called "struts.py" that was modified for use in RasMol. I am familiar with his version of this script for PyMOL. It works very well and I have been using it for years. However, the VRML from PyMOL is sometimes buggy. I like the exports from Chimera much better, including the X3D2VRML and X3D2STL utilities. If I could get the same functionality of this "struts" script in Chimera, that would be one less thing I need to go to PyMOL for (the list is getting shorter and shorter!). We're looking at doing it here, but I would welcome any contribution from the Chimera community if something already exists. Do you have anything? Is this script something of interest? Anyone interested in contributing to our "exchange" database/web portal? I would love any feedback you might have. Thanks, Darrell -- Darrell Hurt, Ph.D. Section Head, Computational Biology Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) OCICB/OSMO/OD/NIAID/NIH 31 Center Drive, Room 3B62B, MSC 2135 Bethesda, MD 20892-2135 Office: 301-402-0095 Mobile: 301-758-3559 Web: BCBB Home Page<http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/odoffices/omo/ocicb/Pages/bcbb.…> Twitter: @niaidbioit<https://twitter.com/niaidbioit> Disclaimer: The information in this e-mail and any of its attachments is confidential and may contain sensitive information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage devices. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shall not accept liability for any statements made that are sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of the NIAID by one of its representatives.

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Minimization and mystery nonstandard HIS atom name
by Jason L Burkhead 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

I am trying to minimize a protein structure and run into the following error: 'No MMTK name for atom "HND1" in standard residue "HIS"' My .pdb file specifies this atom as ND1, and if I change it to HND1 it still gives me the same error. Does anyone have any suggestions for a solution? The reply log is below: Thanks Jason No incomplete side chains No SEQRES records for COMMD1_C_terminus_c.2.0.pdb (#0) chain A; guessing terminii instead Chain-initial residues that are actual N terminii: GLY 1.A Chain-initial residues that are not actual N terminii: Chain-final residues that are actual C terminii: ASN 73.A Chain-final residues that are not actual C terminii: 42 hydrogen bonds Hydrogens added Charge model: AMBER ff99SB Non-standard atom names: HIS HND1 (HIS 17.A HND1, HIS 22.A HND1) Total charge for #0: -4.000 Correct charges are unknown for 1 non-standard atom names in otherwise standard residues Charges of 0.0 were assigned to the unknown atoms Details in reply log No MMTK name for atom "HND1" in standard residue "HIS"

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Re: [Chimera-users] [chimera-dev] UCSF Chimera Help
by Elaine Meng 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

Dear Neil, Chimera does not do docking except for fairly limited single-ligand calculations using an AutoDock Vina web service: you can only dock one ligand at a time and get up to 10 orientations back. You can't search a database of ligands, for example. The interface to the Vina web service is in the menu of Chimera version 1.7 (Jan 2013) and newer: Tools... Surface/Binding Analysis... AutoDock Vina. It is recommended you run other tools first to prepare the receptor before using this tool. See the manual page for details: <http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/vina/vina.html> However, Chimera does have a nice "ViewDock" interface for looking at the output from several docking programs that could be run outside of Chimera: DOCK, AutoDock, AutoDock Vina, Glide, GOLD, Mordor. If the fairly simple interface mentioned above does not suffice for what you want to do, you may want to try one or more of those other programs (several are free). The ViewDock man page includes links to their websites; see the "input" section: <http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/viewdock/framevd.…> There is also a ViewDock tutorial: <http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/tutorials/vdtut.html> I CC'd the chimera-users list because this is more of a user question than a developer (programming) issue. I hope this helps, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco On Aug 21, 2013, at 1:23 AM, Neil Bugeja wrote: > Dear Sir/Madam > > I am a student at the University of Malta and I am currently using your software to carry out homology modelling for my thesis. > > I have a slight problem figuring out how to dock a ligand into a receptor on the program...Is this possible or do I need to install another software? > I tried looking through the available tutorials but cannot find any so far > > Thank you for your help > > Regards

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Re: [Chimera-users] RMSD for two ligands
by Pavithra 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

Dear Ma'am, Thank you so much. its working now. On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 2:25 AM, Elaine Meng <meng(a)cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote: > Dear Pavithra, > Chimera cannot guess which atoms to use when there are different numbers > of atoms in the two groups (#0 and #1). You would have to either > > (A) include all the names of the atoms, in the order you want them > matched, in the rmsd command. It would be something like: rmsd #0:15@c1,c2,c3 > #1:12@c10,c5,c2 (if you wanted to match residue 15 atom C1 with residue > 12 atom C10, residue 15 atom C2 with residue 12 atom C5, etc.). To see the > atom names, show labels, for example command: label #0:15#1:12 > > or > > (B) select all the atoms with the mouse (Shift-Ctrl-click) one by one, > first the atoms you want to match in the first molecule, then the atoms you > want to match in the second molecule in the corresponding order, and then > use "sel" to specify the atoms in the rmsd command > > The "rmsd" manual page can be viewed here (or by using command: help rmsd): > <http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/home/meng/docs/UsersGuide/midas/rmsd.html> > > ... and more about how to specify atoms in the command line: > < > http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/home/meng/docs/UsersGuide/midas/atom_spec.html#bas… > > > > I hope this helps, > Elaine > ----- > Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. > UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab > Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry > University of California, San Francisco > > On Aug 21, 2013, at 1:05 AM, Pavithra wrote: > > > Dear Users, > > I want to calculate the RMSD of two ligand molecules of different atom > counts but have a common scaffold. > > I tried rmsd #0 #1 > > but I'm getting the error: unusual numbers of atoms chosen for > evaluation. > > > > rmsd #0:15-17 #1:15-17 > > atleast one atom must be selected. > > > could somebody help me to find the RMSD between two ligands of different > atom counts. > > -- > > regards, > > Pavithra.K.B. > > -- regards, Pavithra.K.B.

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RMSD for two ligands
by Pavithra 21 Aug '13

21 Aug '13

Dear Users, I want to calculate the RMSD of two ligand molecules of different atom counts but have a common scaffold. I tried rmsd #0 #1 but I'm getting the error: unusual numbers of atoms chosen for evaluation. rmsd #0:15-17 #1:15-17 atleast one atom must be selected. could somebody help me to find the RMSD between two ligands of different atom counts. -- regards, Pavithra.K.B.

2 1

save colored blobs in session
by Zoltan Metlagel 20 Aug '13

20 Aug '13

Hi everyone, I've been trying to color blobs of different sizes in a tomogram by un-hiding them in order of size using the "hide dust" tool and coloring as they become visible. This has been working well and given me some insight into the structure I'm looking for, but I'm unable to restore the session to it's previous state using the "save session"/"restore session" features. The maps open fine, but all the coloring is lost. I've tried this in Chimera 1.7 and 1.8, with the same results. Am I missing something? According to the online manual, colors should be saved in a session. I apologize if this has been asked before, but I haven't been able to find the solution in the archives either. I'm otherwise very happy with Chimera, thanks for all your efforts. Thanks in advance, Zoltan Metlagel, LBNL

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transparencies within transparencies
by Elizabeth Montabana 17 Aug '13

17 Aug '13

Hi All I have a difference map that I'd like to have set to 50% transparent overlaid with the original data map set to 70% transparent. If I do this, I cease to see any off the difference map. Is there anyway to accomplish this in Chimera? thanks Liz Montabana Graduate Student Agard Lab, UCSF

2 1

Hide all ribbons not in specific chain
by Thomas Hrabe 16 Aug '13

16 Aug '13

Hi everyone, I want to display one chain from a structure, only. However, I do not understand how to achieve that. After my PDB file opens, I can do select :*.A #select all residues in chain A that I want to have select invert #select everything else not in chain A ~ribbon hides everything. How can I tell ~ribbon to hide everything not in chain A. Or, how can I select everything not in chain A? I am calling chimera through the socket and do not want to parse out every chain. Thanks in advance, Thomas

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File Operations *veery* slow on Win 7
by Markus Heller 12 Aug '13

12 Aug '13

Hi, I'm running the latest release of Chimera (1.8 build 38824), but I've observed this with the 2 previous releases as well. Computer is a core i7 with 32 GB RAM and an Nvidia Quadro FX 1700 with 512 MB DDR2 memory and latest driver. OS is Windoze 7 64 bit. Pretty much every time I click File --> Save mol2 or Save pdb or Save Session As, I get the blue spinning wheel of death and (not responding) in the window title bar. It's not a deal breaker, but it's pretty annoying. Anybody else seeing this? Also, when I start Chimera, the screen goes black for a second and all window title bars change to standard blue. When I exit Chimera, the process reverses. Are these observations related? And how can I provide more information in addition to my vague description? Thanks and Cheers Markus -- Markus Heller, Ph.D. NMR Scientist CDRD - The Centre for Drug Research and Development 2405 Wesbrook Mall, Fourth Floor | Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3 | Main: (604) 827-1147 Direct: (604) 827-1122 | F: (604) 827-1299 | E: mheller(a)cdrd.ca<mailto:mheller@cdrd.ca> | www.cdrd.ca [cid:image007.png@01CE950C.D960A9A0] Follow us: [Description: cid:image003.jpg@01CD86A6.39B41A10] <https://twitter.com/C_D_R_D> [Description: cid:image005.jpg@01CD86AE.B197F5D0] <http://www.linkedin.com/groups/CDRD-3186016/about?report%2Esuccess=3NcE4iZo…> [Description: cid:image009.png@01CD86AE.B197F5D0] <https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Centre-for-Drug-Research-and-Development…> [Description: cid:image010.png@01CD86AE.B197F5D0] <http://www.youtube.com/user/CDRDCVI?view_as=public> This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute, copy, or alter this email.

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Show backbone chain-trace by default
by Thomas Hrabe 09 Aug '13

09 Aug '13

Hi everyone, I was looking for the setting to tell Chimera to open a PDB file in backbone chain-trace mode rather than looking at the ribbon. Is that possible? Thanks in advance, Thomas

2 1

About selection of atom
by Chung Fan LAM 09 Aug '13

09 Aug '13

Hi, I cannot select atoms by using Ctrl+left button/double click left button by using my home PC, but I can do so by using my notebook. I guess the difference between my two computers is the input device. My home PC is using mouse while my notebook is using touch pad. I would like to know if there is any setting I can change, so that I can use the mouse to select atoms. Thanks. Best wishes, Frankie

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Surface calculation failed problem
by Hunter Brown 09 Aug '13

09 Aug '13

Hello, I know this has been a somewhat common problem. When trying to display the molecular surface on a protein (I want to color by hydrophobicity and surface charge) I get the error "Surface calculation failed, mscalc returned code 5." I have tried increasing the VDW radius by 0.5, and lowering probe radius, and turning off 'display disjoint surfaces.' So far I have not been able to display the surface. I have a colleague that has displayed the molecular surface for a viral capsid, so I would think that I should be able to do it for a protein. Is there anything else I can do? It would be really nice to create some hydrophobicity and surface charge images. Thanks in advance! -Hunter Hunter Brown Bassoonist, Contrabassoonist, Composer, Chemical Engineering Major University of New Mexico

3 2

Help with RMSD
by Chee Wezen, Xavier 09 Aug '13

09 Aug '13

Hello, may i know how to i use Chimera to calculate RMSD ? I opened the command line and typed "rmsd #0 #1" but the rmsd that i received from the two molecules above is way too high for something this superimposed. Can someone please suggest what should i do ? Meanwhile, i've also received error warnings for other molecules that i am testing (along the lines of "different number of atoms" found). this should not be the case as the molecules are identical to one another. Any help regarding this is much appreciated ! Thanks !

2 2

ask for help about surface and Label color
by Jian Guan 08 Aug '13

08 Aug '13

Hi, I am Jian, working in Hershey Medical Center, PSU. I am a Chimera User. I have two questions. 1: When I fit protein molecule structure into the density map of Virus particle. Showing the protein molecule in Surface is not allowed by Chimera. An error window popped out said: "surface calculation failed, mscalc returned code 2". I wonder to know how to solve this problem. I want to modify the molecule structure after fitting. 2: When I label the selected residues, they are always with the same color with residues, can I set them separately? Can I edit the label font? Thank you so much. Hope to hear from you soon. Jian

2 1

show middle slice of vol by using command line
by Dieter Blaas 07 Aug '13

07 Aug '13

Hi, I have been trying hard to do the following by using the command line but so far with no avail: select volume #0 and show just the middle slice as solid. Following the way the commands are usually structured I tried something like "vol #0 style solid planes one" but I do get the error "volume invalid planes argument "one" : Value must be x, y ,z, got 'one'''. But when I try ""vol #0 style solid planes x" I get "volume: invalid planes argument 'x'. So what? Thanks a lor for hints, Dieter -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dieter Blaas, Max F. Perutz Laboratories Medical University of Vienna, Inst. Med. Biochem., Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Dr. Bohr Gasse 9/3, A-1030 Vienna, Austria, Tel: 0043 1 4277 61630, Fax: 0043 1 4277 9616, e-mail: dieter.blaas(a)meduniwien.ac.at ------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 3

Constrained movements
by Damien Larivière 07 Aug '13

07 Aug '13

Dear all, The image below shows 2 chains opened separately from 2 PDB files. I would like to move only the cyan chain. For that, I just have to deactivate the white chain. BUT I would also like to keep fixed a specific atom of the cyan chain, for instance the cyan atom in the red circle. This way this atom serves as a pivot point. I know that I can use "Constrained Move". If I understand well, the "origin" is either 0,0,0 or the center of a model bounding box, not a selected atom. Is it possible to manage this? Many thanks for your help Damien

2 1

Shape complementarity
by Hernando J Sosa 07 Aug '13

07 Aug '13

Dear Chimera, Is there a way to evaluate protein-protein interfaces (e.g. using a program like CCP4 Sc) within chimera?. Thanks Hernando

2 1

Re: [Chimera-users] some questions about Chimera
by Elaine Meng 05 Aug '13

05 Aug '13

> From: "Graham Johnson (qb3@UCSF)" <graham(a)grahamj.com> > Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] some questions about Chimera > Date: August 5, 2013 11:59:03 AM PDT > To: Ruijie Chen <spider32123(a)gmail.com> > > Hi Ruijie, > The "missing" colors are in the .dae or .wrl file, however, programs like Maya do not know how to read them (i.e., they only read and display the geometry, not the color-per-vertex colors). For doing this type of work, I recommend installing ePMV to directly manipulate your models in Maya. There are many things that ePMV cannot do where a Chimera–>universalFile–>Maya protocol is still useful, but ePMV will handle most of your goals. > http://epmv.scripps.edu > > Regards, > Graham > > Graham Johnson PhD > qb3@UCSF Fellow > UCSF Lab: http://mesoscope.org > Medical Illustration: http://grahamj.com > > On Aug 5, 2013, at 10:59 AM, Conrad Huang <conrad(a)cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote: >>> Dear Sir / Madam: >>> >>> I am a 3D animation student who recently started to making medical animation videos, and I found Chimera is a very usefull tool for building molecules and proteins. >>> >>> However, there are few things that I don't understand: >>> >>> 1. After I import a .dae file which exported from hemoglobin (PDB: 2hhb), I found that the color I have set for each ribbon is gone, the one I have got inside maya is a hemoglobin molecule with one color. And when I want to select each alpha or beta-globin, I failed to do so because there sometimes have some polygons from other alpha or beta-globin. Is there a way to solve these problems? >>> >>> 2. I have tried to export the scene to a .wrl file and convert it to maya file via wrl2ma, but when I open the finish converted maya file it always give me lots of error messages like this : >>> "Error: file: C:/Users/**/hemo_ribbon.ma line 116: setAttr: Too much data was provided. The last 173 elements were not used. // " >>> and this :"// Error: file: C:/Users/**/hemo_ribbon.ma line 13078: setAttr: Too much data was provided. The last 1193 elements were not used. // " >>> Is this a problem which happen during the export process of Chimera or some other reasons? >>> >>> Looking forward for your reply >>> Thank you >>> -- >>> With kind regards >>> Ruijie Chen

1 0

some questions about Chimera
by Ruijie Chen 03 Aug '13

03 Aug '13

Dear Sir / Madam: I am a 3D animation student who recently started to making medical animation videos, and I found Chimera is a very usefull tool for building molecules and proteins. However, there are few things that I don't understand: 1. After I import a .dae file which exported from hemoglobin (PDB: 2hhb), I found that the color I have set for each ribbon is gone, the one I have got inside maya is a hemoglobin molecule with one color. And when I want to select each alpha or beta-globin, I failed to do so because there sometimes have some polygons from other alpha or beta-globin. Is there a way to solve these problems? 2. I have tried to export the scene to a .wrl file and convert it to mayafile via wrl2ma, but when I open the finish converted maya file it always give me lots of error messages like this : "Error: file: C:/Users/**/hemo_ribbon.ma line 116: setAttr: Too much data was provided. The last 173 elements were not used. // " and this :"// Error: file: C:/Users/**/hemo_ribbon.ma line 13078: setAttr: Too much data was provided. The last 1193 elements were not used. // " Is this a problem which happen during the export process of Chimera or some other reasons? Looking forward for your reply Thank you -- With kind regards Ruijie Chen

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Re: [Chimera-users] Using Surfnet tool in a per-frame python script
by Elaine Meng 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

Hi William, Thanks for your kind words! I'd like to suggest an alternative approach: accumulate occupancy for the ligand over the whole trajectory and then show an isosurface for that occupancy map. You'd have to contour at a low level (e.g. 1 for everywhere the ligand has been during at least 1 frame), but in my mind at least, this produces a nice blob showing everywhere the ligand has been. I don't know how successful it would be on this specific data, but it should be relatively easy to try (no scripting involved). It may depend on how flexible everything is and how much it moves around… you can hold steady based on some set of atoms, but there may still be residual "motion blur." See the "Occupancy Analysis" section of the MD Movie man page: <http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/movie/framemovie.…> <http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/movie/movie.html#…> You would have to first indicate atoms to "hold steady" (if an appropriate set exists, or maybe your trajectory is already pre-processed to keep the structure in the same place and orientation as possible), select the ligand, and then in the occupancy calculation dialog choose appropriate settings. Sounds like you would turn off (set to false) "limit data collection to within cutoff…" and "collect data separately…", maybe decrease "volume grid spacing" to get a less chunky final result, and adjust anything else as you see fit. As for pruning, you can hide disconnected bits of surface using Hide Dust and/or erase parts of a volume dataset using Volume Eraser (both in menu under Tools… Volume Data). <http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/volumeviewer/hide…> <http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/voleraser/voleras…> Just an idea, but maybe worth a try… Elaine ---------- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco > First, thank you all for such a wonderful program! Also, thanks to the > users' list for such quick, thorough, and always-helpful answers! > > Second, a little background: I have a gromacs MD simulation (well several, > actually) of a small ligand diffusing through a protein. Because the ligand > requires the entire simulation to traverse the protein cavity, I was > thinking of using the Surfnet tool to accumulate or "build-up" the cavity > interface between the ligand and protein using a per-frame python script a > la Eric's suggestion in the Dec 2009 [Chimera-users] Surfnet command line > thread on this mailing list. I was thinking I could then "prune" the > accumulated SurfaceModel using the surfvol.py script available on the > http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/trac/chimera/wiki/Scripts download page.

1 0

Using Surfnet tool in a per-frame python script
by William McDonald 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

Dear Chimera Developers, First, thank you all for such a wonderful program! Also, thanks to the users' list for such quick, thorough, and always-helpful answers! Second, a little background: I have a gromacs MD simulation (well several, actually) of a small ligand diffusing through a protein. Because the ligand requires the entire simulation to traverse the protein cavity, I was thinking of using the Surfnet tool to accumulate or "build-up" the cavity interface between the ligand and protein using a per-frame python script a la Eric's suggestion in the Dec 2009 [Chimera-users] Surfnet command line thread on this mailing list. I was thinking I could then "prune" the accumulated SurfaceModel using the surfvol.py script available on the http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/trac/chimera/wiki/Scripts download page. Now, I can generate a Surfnet surface easily (as Eric points out) for each MD frame using the python commands from Surfnet import interface_surfnet interface_surfnet("LigandAtoms","ProteinAtoms") But how, if possible, can I combine all the individual SurfaceModels into one surface? Also, and not secondarily, does this seem like a reasonable approach to obtain the ligand-protein cavity surface? Thanks again for all your generous support. -- William J. McDonald Postdoctoral Scholar Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of California, Santa Cruz

2 1

Hello
by A Amiri 30 Jul '13

30 Jul '13

Hello. I have a problem with chimera! I want to combine two different pdb file by chimera , which will be merge into a single model. I used the "join models" section from chimera but the "apply" button was inactive and i don't know how i can activate it! please help me. thank you for your useful software.

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Amino acid scanning
by Alper Yilmaz 30 Jul '13

30 Jul '13

Hi, We are conducting a study to figure out the best amino acid mutation for increased affinity for a particular metal ion. I'm pretty novice in this field so I wanted to get suggestions as to my approach makes sense or not. I'll write a demo script (more probably python script) to substitute certain amino acids with all standard amino acids and then minimize the structure. As far as I know, Chimera can not calculate free energy, so I will save the PDB files and then use another program to calculate the free energy. My first question is, whether the commands below are appropriate for my purpose or not? The sample below is a snippet from an exhaustive list. I preferred to save the information regarding clashes before the minimization just to keep record. swapaa ala :22.a findclash :22.a log true saveFile clash_report_22ala minimize nogui true write #0 test_22ala swapaa val :22.a findclash :22.a log true saveFile clash_report_22val minimize nogui true write #0 test_22val swapaa ile :22.a findclash :22.a log true saveFile clash_report_22ile minimize nogui true write #0 test_22ile ... My second question is, when I have many PDB files, which software is suitable for calculating the free energy for each. Thanks, Assist.Prof.Dr. Alper YILMAZ Department of Bioengineering Faculty of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering Yildiz Technical University Esenler, Istanbul/TURKEY 34210 Phone: +90.212.383-4657 (office) Fax: +90.212.383-4625

3 2

Using Chimera in a non-graphics environment
by Devan Bicher 24 Jul '13

24 Jul '13

To Whom it may concern, Hi, my name is Devan Bicher and I am a researcher at Lehigh University. I am working on computational studies of proteins and Chimera's findHBond function is extremely useful! I have been using chimera a lot recently, however since I am working with a number of different protein/substrate combinations it would be great for me to use findHbond in a batch sort of way in which I can supply numerous inputs and allow chimera to run on all of them. Does chimera have any sort of built in batch processing option like this? -- -Devan Bicher Bioengineer, Computer Science minor Lehigh University

2 1

volume viewer window
by jparmache＠lmb.uni-muenchen.de 24 Jul '13

24 Jul '13

Hello, I would like to ask, whether there could be a possibility to define how many density levels one is able to see at the same time in the Volume Viewer window? Currently, there are max 3, however, with larger monitors, this could be for some beneficiary if one could define the max amount. What do you think, would that be possible ? Best regards, Jean-Paul Armache

3 2

ViewDock Data Analysis
by felipe vasquez 24 Jul '13

24 Jul '13

Hi, I have been executing a couple of docking processes through Autodock vina module in Chimera. Nevertheless, I am a bit confused about the docking analysis, because although I obtained a score for a certain number of ligand poses, I do not know if this number (-9.2, as an example) is expressed in kcal/mol, kj/mol, or even another units. On the other hand, I could not understand the meaning of RMSD l.b and RMSD u.b. What are they? and what role the play in the docking analysis procedure? Best regards, *Andrés Felipe Vásquez J., MSc.* Grupo de Fisiología Molecular Subdirección de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica Dirección de Investigación en Salud Pública Instituto Nacional de Salud Avenida calle 26 No. 51-20 - Zona 6 CAN Bogotá, D.C., Colombia

2 2

Docking with Autodock vina (Chimera)
by felipe vasquez 24 Jul '13

24 Jul '13

Hi, I am trying to perform a docking process via the tool 'autodock vina' embedded into chimera menu. However, once I am baout to run the process, I always obtain the same message: Service 'opal:vina_1.1.2' is unavailable. What can I do in order to overcome this problem? Thanks in advance for your help. Best regards, *Andrés Felipe Vásquez J., MSc.* Grupo de Fisiología Molecular Subdirección de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica Dirección de Investigación en Salud Pública Instituto Nacional de Salud Avenida calle 26 No. 51-20 - Zona 6 CAN Bogotá, D.C., Colombia

2 2

Feature Request
by R.J. Swett 19 Jul '13

19 Jul '13

Hey there, I was wondering if you could enable movie encoding to .wmv in an upcoming build? I know ffmpeg supports that format, so hopefully it'd be an easy update. I usually have to re-encode videos, for some reason my new computer won't play most videos while using presenter-view with HDMI output. It's just a finicky little thing, but it'd make my life a lot easier. I've found a some other people with the same issue with HDMI-output only computers. -- R.J. Swett Wayne State University 357 Chemistry Detroit, MI 48201 Lab Phone 313-577-0552 Cell Phone 906-235-0768

2 1

running chimera 1.8 needs root privilege
by Robert Wohlhueter 16 Jul '13

16 Jul '13

I've been using Chimera 1.5.3 under Linux (Ubuntu 12.04, 64-bit) without problems; that version I had installedas root, andis owned by root. Just now I updated to version 1.8, which, initially, I also installed as root. But trying to run it (as non-root) gave me fairly opaque error messages(copied below). On a hunch that it was a matter of privilege, I tried running with `sudo` -- which works fine. Since it was not obvious where the problem lay, I cleaned out the installation, and installed anew as a normal user (me). Accordingly, the whole installation directory tree is owned by me. But still I cannot run it (same errors) as me, but only with `sudo`. Same user, same start directory, apparently the same Python (2.7) as works with v. 1.5.3. I'm totally flummoxed! Can't imagine where the privilege hang-up is. Any hints where I should look? Thanks, Bob Wohlhueter *****************************C-shell output******************* chimera X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation) Major opcode of failed request: 128 (GLX) Minor opcode of failed request: 198 () Serial number of failed request: 2813 Currentserial number in output stream: 2813

2 1

Fitting multiple atomic structures in a density map
by Anindito Sen 16 Jul '13

16 Jul '13

Dear All, I need to fit atomic structures of two different proteins of different sizes in a density map. The location of both the proteins in the map is well known. While using the fitting tool, I can get the atomic structure of the bigger protein docked very well, the problem arises while fitting the smaller one. The fit option fails and docks the structure into the region of the density map where the atomic structure of the larger protein is docked , an incorrect position. How can I fit both the atomic structures in the density map correctly? The resolution of the density map is ~10Å at FSC cutoff of 0.5 Thanks Andy Dr. Anindito Sen (Ph.D) >Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy >Graduate School of Medicine >University of Tokyo >Tel & fax: +81-3-5841-3339

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molmap and origin index
by Catalin Buiu 15 Jul '13

15 Jul '13

Hello all, I have the following problem: when I use molmap to generate a map from an atomic structure, the result is fine: both align. When I use another (Matlab) program to generate the map, the two, when opened in Chimera do not align anymore. My question is how molmap generates an origin index such that both the map and the structure do align and how Chimera reads (and converts) the xyz origin data from the MRC file? Thank you. Catalin Buiu University of Bucharest, Romania

2 6

Euler angles in "Transform coordinates" tool
by Dan Cohen 15 Jul '13

15 Jul '13

Hello all, I have been wrecking my mind in trying to use the "Transform coordinates" tool to apply a rotation to a PDB file based on Euler angles taken from IMP. I focused my problem to the following : According to IMP, they use the ZXZ notation in the original (lab) coordinate system. According to my understanding of the chimera docs, you use ZXZ in the self (rotating) coordinate system. I have been trying to convert between those two using a python library I found on the net but keep on getting results that either show I'm missing something or a bug in somewhere. (It's called transformations.py by Christoph Gohlke) Are you aware of any issues or similar problems? I saw somewhere that someone mentioned a similar problem that was due to PDB header file with weird axis origin, but i wasn't able to get any more info. Will be thankful for any hint, Dany

2 1

cutting the surface
by Victor Muñoz 15 Jul '13

15 Jul '13

Dear all, I want to make an image using the Surface Cliping option in Chimera. The problem is that I just want to cut the surface and not the molecule when using the Viewer to do that. As an example, I want to so something like this image from the wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MM_PEF.png ). Thanks for everything in advance. Kind Regards, Victor Muñoz --

2 1

command line for silhouette representation
by Jean Didier Pie Marechal 15 Jul '13

15 Jul '13

Dear all, I am making a movie using a command file. I would like to represent the atom using the same kind of picture than those generated using the Presets option silhouette. Can you tell me how to do so? Cheers, JD Dr. Jean-Didier Maréchal Associate Professor The Computational Biotechnological Chemistry Team Unitat de Química Física Departament de Química Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Edifici C.n. 08193 Cerdanyola (Barcelona) Tel: +34.935814936 e-mail: JeanDidier.Marechal(a)uab.es www: http://asklipio.qf.uab.es

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Deleting Psubobonds/Connectivity
by Dylan J. Bennett 11 Jul '13

11 Jul '13

Hi, I was wondering if there was a way to delete psudobonds and connectivity in Chimera. I use a protein-protein docking software that does not renumber chains, this results in a structure that has 2 chain As for example. When I go to analyze this in Chimera, it automatically creates a psudobond between the two chains with the same ID. Since it thinks they're connected, I can't rename the chain IDs for just one of them. I know I can hide all the psubobonds, but this doesn't really help as I still need some of them and would like to rename the chain IDs uniquely. Thank you. -- -*Dylan J. Bennett* *Dylan.John.Bennett(a)Gmail.com (914) 621-1149* *Stony Brook University* *dylan.bennett(a)stonybrook.edu* *New York Medical College* *Biochemistry* * BSB Room 102* * dylan_bennett(a)NYMC.edu*

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How Chimera reads a dcd file
by Syeda Hira Batool 10 Jul '13

10 Jul '13

Hello! I have psf and dcd files.I want to read them using my own script(non-commercial/educational purpose).So I want to know how Chimera reads dcd files.Can you please help me out in this regard by providing me some helping material or a script. Thank you Hira Batool Student of BS-Bioinformatics Biosciences Department COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Islamabad, PAKISTAN

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Software Chemistry Linux
by giovanni.ortosecco＠libero.it 09 Jul '13

09 Jul '13

Dear List, kindly would like to know if there is an open-source software for advanced molecular modeling for use with Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian) along the lines of ChemDraw or ChemSketch. Thanks for Your attention. Best Regards, Giovanni Ortosecco Dr. Giovanni Ortosecco Institute of Biostructures and Bioimaging National Research Council Naples - Italy Posted by: Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail http://www.ubuntu.com/about/ Use free software!

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Software Chemistry for Linux
by giovanni.ortosecco＠libero.it 09 Jul '13

09 Jul '13

Dear List, kindly would like to know if there is an open-source software for advanced molecular modeling for use with Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian) along the lines of ChemDraw or ChemSketch. Thanks for your attention. Best Regards, Giovanni Ortosecco Institute of Biostructures and Bioimaging National Research Council Naples - Italy

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color by height
by p.j.depablo 09 Jul '13

09 Jul '13

Hi everybody I am interested in coloring an EM volume by height. In this option you can change the origin and the axis of coloring. Specifically, I rotate t the structure untill a desired orientation. Then, I would like to choose the axis of coloring to be the same as the view axis, but can not find the viewing axis coordinates. Is there possible to find this informaton anywhere? Thank you in adavance. Pedro

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camera horizontal field of view
by Dougherty, Matthew T 09 Jul '13

09 Jul '13

The camera settings allow for a horizontal field of view of 1-179 degrees. Wikipedia states that human horizontal field of view is ~180 degree. using 179 is not anything I normally recognize, looks like star trek enterprise going to warp. In cinematography books, lenses are sometimes referenced at around 20 degrees. For chimera I have found 10-30 gives nominal viewing on LCD. Setting it 1 is effectively orthographic. For DTI in a dome projection (as opposed to dome camera), I frequently will use 80-110, unless I am looking for a orthographic look, then lower values. For the mono & DTI cameras on a flat display, what are the values or the process to determine the values, for the most accurate mapping to normal human vision? Matthew Dougherty National Center for Macromolecular Imaging Baylor College of Medicine

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ergonomics
by Dougherty, Matthew T 08 Jul '13

08 Jul '13

a few suggestions on placement 1) on viewing dialog, change the location of "view all" from the sideview window, relocating it to the bottom next to reset/restore/etc buttons. having additional orthogonal buttons (x,y,z) would be avoid having to do a lot of text commands. 2) on the volume viewer dialog, saving dialog preferences is accessed through its pulldown menu; having it act like other dialogs would be helpful (ie, at the bottom like viewing dialog). 3) the main 3d graphics window when dominant , causes the default pulldown menus to appear such as when chimera starts up. when accessing volume viewing, the overall chimera pulldown menus change. The only way to get the original/main pulldown to return is to put the mouse on the 3d graphics window and doing a left click twice. Since the volume viewing has its own pulldown menus, getting this overall switch of pulldown menus eliminated would help avoid a lot of unneeded mouse movements, particularly for the situation when two displays are used, one dedicated to 3D graphics, and the other having the viz controls. Matthew Dougherty National Center for Macromolecular Imaging Baylor College of Medicine

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Creating Average Structure from PSF/DCD --> Include metal ions in final structure
by Peter Murphy 08 Jul '13

08 Jul '13

Hi, I am trying to create an average structure in chimera 1.7 using the built in MDtools (loading a PSF/DCD file to get the trajectory). I am able to create an averaged structure for a select number of frames easily, but it doesn't appear that the metal ions are included when the averaging occurs. Is there someway to force the ions to be included? or alternatively, is there a script to create an average structure that includes selected atoms? Thanks, Peter -- Peter Murphy, Ph.D. Candidate Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Dalhousie University Halifax, NS Canada

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icosehedron enhancement
by Dougherty, Matthew T 08 Jul '13

08 Jul '13

for the mesh adjustment, it would be good to be able to enter the radius of the mesh tubes. currently I have to select the item, go to the inspector to set the radius. Matthew Dougherty National Center for Macromolecular Imaging Baylor College of Medicine

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Re: [Chimera-users] [chimera-dev] Trouble with Saving New Atom Attributes
by Elaine Meng 05 Jul '13

05 Jul '13

Hi Juliette, PDB format does not include atom-type information, as you have seen. The only sure way to save your atom type changes is to save the Chimera session. <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/savemodel.html> <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/sessions.html> However: Chimera applies chemical perception to try to figure out the atom types when a structure is read in from a file. The Mol2 format does have some atom-type information, but the SYBYL Mol2 types are not related 1-to-1 to the types in Chimera. You could try saving in Mol2 format and reading it back in to see if the information you want is retained. Further, if you have added all hydrogens before writing the file (PDB or Mol2) the chemical perception is more well-determined and it is possible that it will assign the types you intended. If those do not work, however, the session is the way to go. If you just wanted a list of the assignments rather than the assignments per se, you could use "File... Save Attributes" from the menu of Render by Attribute (itself in menu under Tools... Depiction). <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/render/render.html…> This seems more like a "user" question than a developer (programmer) one; it's not necessary to email both lists. I hope this helps, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco On Jul 5, 2013, at 2:34 PM, Juliette Cao wrote: > Hi All, > I was successfully able to change a few atom types using the setattr command. > I checked to see that the atoms I changed were correct (by selecting the atoms and then then clicking the IDATM type option.) > I saved the .pdb file > When I opened up the saved .pdb file and checked the atom types, they had reverted back to their original type. > Is there a specific way to save files after using setattr command? > Regards, > Juliette Cao > University of Houston

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Trouble with Saving New Atom Attributes
by Juliette Cao 05 Jul '13

05 Jul '13

Hi All, I was successfully able to change a few atom types using the setattr command. I checked to see that the atoms I changed were correct (by selecting the atoms and then then clicking the IDATM type option.) I saved the .pdb file When I opened up the saved .pdb file and checked the atom types, they had reverted back to their original type. Is there a specific way to save files after using setattr command? Regards, Juliette Cao University of Houston

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force field for G-quadruplexes
by Gilmar Salgado 05 Jul '13

05 Jul '13

Hello, recently I was looking into the capabilities of Chimera minimization tools to minimize the structure of a DNA G-quadruplex molecule. The problem is that all G-quadruplexes have an ion (K+ or Na+) in-between and stabilizing the tetrads. I wonder if the force field available in chimera are "decent" to water-minimize this kind of structures? ...and which one is more adapted, after all those are non-conventional DNA structures. Thanks in advance for your input Gilmar Salgado Université Segalen Laboratoire ARNA (INSERM U869) Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie 2 rue Robert Escarpit 33 076 Pessac Cedex FRANCE +33(0) 540 0022 24 +33(0) 557 571 015 (fax)

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Drawing with BILD commands directly from Chimera command line
by Dan Cohen 03 Jul '13

03 Jul '13

Hello all, Is there an option to type in BILD commands directly into the Chimera command line? (I know you can create a file with BILD commands and open it with Chimera but it would be helpful just to open the command line and type them in) Thank you, Dany

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Faraday Discussion on Molecular Simulation and Visualization - call for abstracts deadline 22 July 2013
by baaden＠smplinux.de 30 Jun '13

30 Jun '13

Dear Colleague, You may be interested in the following event: Faraday Discussion #169 - Molecular Simulations and Visualization ** CALL for ABSTRACTS deadline 22.7.2013 ** http://www.rsc.org/ConferencesAndEvents/RSCConferences/FD/FD169/cfp.asp A few more details: Current biology, chemistry and materials science make extensive use of computational methods ranging from applications at the cellular level, e.g. in systems biology, to detailed atomistic simulations of molecular assemblies, materials or small molecules. Faraday Discussion 169 will illustrate and discuss the potential of Human-Computer Interaction and Virtual Reality for computational molecular sciences, focusing on the following themes: * virtual and augmented reality; immersive molecular simulations * advanced visualization and visual analytics * computing power revolution and new algorithms: GP-GPUs, clouds and more * applications and serious games: from docking to protein folding Take part in the excellent scientific programme at this Discussion, in which experts in biology, chemistry and computational science will stimulate discussions and initiate research aimed at deeper involvement, beyond the boundaries of each discipline. Professor Helmut Grubmuller, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany Dr Graham Johnson, University of California, San Francisco, USA Dr David Glowacki, University of Bristol, UK Professor Valerie Daggett, University of Washington, USA Professor Thomas Ertl, University of Stuttgart, Germany Professor Vijay Pande, Stanford University, USA Professor John Stone, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Dr Melanie Stegman, Federation of American Scientists, USA Assistant Professor Jim Zheng, Medical University of South Carolina, USA Professor Frederick Brooks, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Professor Thomas DeFanti, University of California, San Diego, USA Virtual Reality represents a formidable communication and learning tool that could significantly speed up understanding of dynamic behaviour of complex biomolecular systems. This meeting is an excellent opportunity to bring the relevant disciplines closer together and benefit from collaborations across diverse fields. Yours sincerely, Marc Baaden -- Dr. Marc Baaden - Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Paris mailto:baaden@smplinux.de - http://www.baaden.ibpc.fr FAX: +33 15841 5026 - Tel: +33 15841 5176 ou +33 609 843217

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water display problem
by inhee park 28 Jun '13

28 Jun '13

Is there a xyz coordinate range limit or a residue numbering limit in Chmiera for display? I tried to display all atoms in the PDB file using chimera version 1.8. As shown in the attached figure, not all waters were displayed. If I loaded the same PDB file using other programs such as vmd or maestro, all waters were correctly displayed. FYI, I also attached the PDB file. Thank you for your help. _________ inhee park

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Monitoring hbonds in chimera
by Neha Gandhi 28 Jun '13

28 Jun '13

Dear Users, I am trying to use hbond command in the movie tool of Chimera 1.8. I want to repeat hbond analyses with different criteria simultaneously in a single script these are my commands select :9@O1P,O2P,O3P,N,H :12@N,H findhbond selRestrictboth linewidth 2 color green reveal true (..I want to monitor hydrogen bond between these two residues with default criteria) ~sel select :3@O1P,O2P,O3P :6@O1P,O2P findhbond selRestrict any color black reveal true relax true distSlop 2.7 intraRes false ~sel When I tried these commands in one single script, I could see hydrogen bonds displayed for residue 3 and 6 and not between residues 9 and 12. Hopefully you can correct me. Your help is appreciated -- Regards, Dr. Neha S. Gandhi, Curtin Research Fellow, School of Biomedical Sciences, Curtin University, Perth GPO U1987 Australia LinkedIn Research Gate

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Re: [Chimera-users] Chimera 1.8rc 64-bit as Default Application
by Antoine Maillard 28 Jun '13

28 Jun '13

Suggestion to Dylan Bennett / Chimera 1.8rc 64-bit as Default Application Hi Dylan, you asked how to get Windows 7 to acknowledge Chimera as the default program to open specific files. In my experience the same problem was solved by running Ccleaner up to 3 times in a row to fix registry keys. After the first run, re-scanning the registry with Ccleaner shows that .pdb entries still need to be fixed. I kept running Ccleaner on my computer's registry until it was deemed as clean and only then was file association successful. Hope this helps, Antoine

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Both chimera (x86) and chimera (x86-64) fail to run on Windows 8
by David Konerding 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

Hi, I have a Windows 8 pro machine, 64-bit 8 GB RAM Core i3 and Quadro FX 570. When I start Chimera (x86 and x86-64), I see the splash screen then it says "pythonw.exe has stopped working". When I add --debug: Cannot execute 'gzip': no automatic decompression of .Z files initializing general preferences loading Tix initializing graphics I managed to cause windows to try to send an error report, which captured these files: C:\Users\dek\AppData\Local\Temp\WERF405.tmp.appcompat.txt C:\Users\dek\AppData\Local\Temp\WERF464.tmp.mdmp if those are useful for debugging, I can provide them.

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Chimera 1.8rc 64-bit as Default Application
by Dylan J. Bennett 26 Jun '13

26 Jun '13

Hi, I am attempting to associate pdb and mol2 file types with Chimera 1.8rc in Windows 7. I have tried to set it using the right-click>open with... option in Windows as well as through the control panel. I select the chimera executable, but it does not seem to accept it as a valid program, and it returns to the previous screen without adding Chimera to the box for selection. I know this is not a Windows issue, as I can set other programs and it works fine. As well, I can set other programs for the mol2 and pdb file types. Is this a known issue, is there any work around. It's not the biggest deal, but it would make my life a little easier if I could do this. It used to work in the past, but just not with the latest version. Thank you and have a great day! -- -Dylan J. Bennett Dylan.John.Bennett(a)Gmail.com (914) 621-1149 Stony Brook University dylan.bennett(a)stonybrook.edu New York Medical College Biochemistry BSB Room 102 dylan_bennett(a)NYMC.edu

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Leap Motion
by Aurélien Grosdidier 24 Jun '13

24 Jun '13

Hi all, We're planning to try Chimera with the leap motion device (https://www.leapmotion.com/) Has anyone already succeeded to do so ? Best, Aurélien.

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modeling multimers
by Francesco Pietra 24 Jun '13

24 Jun '13

Hello: Modeling a trimer (all three chains present, though missing residues and atoms) with chimera and modeller installed locally. The default is modeling each chain, one at a time. The chains are identical in sequence but the X-ray structure shows different localized conformations. Question: is modeller modeling by taking the other two chains into account? If already answered, beg pardon. thanks francesco pietra

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Re: [Chimera-users] Chimera-users Digest, Vol 122, Issue 25
by Boaz Shaanan 23 Jun '13

23 Jun '13

Hi Francesco, I doubt that modeller knows how to take into account inter-subunit information. I would be surprised if it does. As far as I know, it's a sequence-homology based model building module which also uses fold recognition and probably other pieces of information but not about oligomeric arrangement. When I dealt with a similar problem (modelling a dimer) I modelled the subunit and then superimposed each of the two subunits on top of the corresponding subunit of the known dimer, followed by Chimera's matchmaker. The resulting dimer is still considered a hypothetical structure by me. Cheers, Boaz Boaz Shaanan, Ph.D. Dept. of Life Sciences Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer-Sheva 84105 Israel E-mail: bshaanan(a)bgu.ac.il Phone: 972-8-647-2220 Skype: boaz.shaanan Fax: 972-8-647-2992 or 972-8-646-1710 ________________________________________ From: chimera-users-bounces(a)cgl.ucsf.edu [chimera-users-bounces(a)cgl.ucsf.edu] on behalf of chimera-users-request(a)cgl.ucsf.edu [chimera-users-request(a)cgl.ucsf.edu] Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2013 10:00 PM To: chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu Subject: Chimera-users Digest, Vol 122, Issue 25 Send Chimera-users mailing list submissions to chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to chimera-users-request(a)cgl.ucsf.edu You can reach the person managing the list at chimera-users-owner(a)cgl.ucsf.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Chimera-users digest..." Today's Topics: 1. modeling multimers (Francesco Pietra) 2. Fwd: modeling multimers (Francesco Pietra) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 07:17:44 +0200 From: Francesco Pietra <chiendarret(a)gmail.com> To: chimera <chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu> Subject: [Chimera-users] modeling multimers Message-ID: <CAEv0nmt6Sy2MJcs=xk18qMGs2d5h0QOS_i7YXAJ1AEwpdWWsCQ(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Hello: Modeling a trimer (all three chains present, though missing residues and atoms) with chimera and modeller installed locally. The default is modeling each chain, one at a time. The chains are identical in sequence but the X-ray structure shows different localized conformations. Question: is modeller modeling by taking the other two chains into account? If already answered, beg pardon. thanks francesco pietra

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Re: [Chimera-users] Antw: Re: atomic models in pdf
by Tom Goddard 20 Jun '13

20 Jun '13

Hi Matthias, I think there are many ways to get Chimera output into 3D PDF if you are willing to drop $600 on commercial software. The trouble is that you have to produce the 3d model in U3D format and then the U3D can be embedded in PDF. Those two conversion steps, going from a Chimera 3d export format such as X3D to U3D and the U3D to PDF I believe can be done by many commercial applications. But I don't know free applications to do it. There may well be free applications but it might take a whole day of digging on the web to find them. If you do find them let us know. It is easier to find a commercial software conversion route. For instance PolyTrans ($395) from Okino Computer Graphics claims to read X3D and export U3D, and Adobe Acrobat Pro X ($200) can put U3D into PDF files. http://www.okino.com/conv/filefrmt_3dexport.htm http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/X/pro/using/WS58a04a822e3e50102bd615109… I've never tried this and would definitely worry about whether PolyTrans or any other software will faithfully handle Chimera's X3D output. I think the basic problem is U3D and 3D PDF are used by almost noone. The Okino web site gives some idea of the trouble with U3D: "Okino also has a long history involved with the U3D file format. U3D has quite a tainted history in the development community. It was derived from the old Intel IFX 3D gaming toolkit of the 1990's and forced upon developers as the Macromedia 'Shockwave-3D file format' in 2000. The Shockwave-3D format was abandoned in 2002 and then it resurfaced in 2004 when Intel forced it upon Adobe as the 3D file format to use within 3D PDF files (instead of Adobe using the better X3D file format). With the IFX toolkit being so buggy, Okino spent much of 2004 through to 2007 debugging the IFX toolkit and creating the main, defacto implementation of the U3D import/export converters." The AxPyMol plug-in you mention does not produce PDF (and is commercial, $148 academic, or $404 for a lab license, 1 year subscription). It embeds 3d PyMol scenes in PowerPoint -- there is no PDF involved as far as I can tell. It uses an Active X plug-in (only available on Windows). Tom On Jun 20, 2013, at 10:29 AM, Matthias Barone wrote: > Hi Tom and Conrad > Thank you for the fast replies and sorry for not being clear: > Im doing all presentations with the beamer package of latex and hence search an interactive way to show 3D models of x-ray protein structures instead of showing pictures. > What Im therefore searching is a way to make a pdf that provides me a 3D model (incl. mouse gestures like zoom, rotate, clip) with pre-set layout (ribbon, electron density colours and so on set in chimera). > > matthias > > > > > > >>> Conrad Huang <conrad(a)cgl.ucsf.edu> 20.06.13 19.16 Uhr >>> > Collada format is used by Apple's iBooks Author program to embed 3D > graphics. Collada files, with .dae extension, can also be displayed in > Apple's Preview application. > > I don't believe Collada is at all related to PDF, which uses U3D format > for 3D data. MeshLab is supposed to read many data formats, including > Collada, and generate U3D output. Unfortunately, Chimera Collada output > is not read properly by MeshLab; triangle per-vertex colors, specified > as an RGBA data source, seem to be ignored. Worse, saving U3D output > (so at least we get the geometric shape) also fails, producing, from > Chimera's 28MB Collada file, 2 1KB files (no, I don't think it's due to > compression :-) ). > > The bottom line is that I do not have anything new to contribute on the > PDF front. Sorry. > > Conrad > > On 6/19/2013 9:43 PM, Tom Goddard wrote: > > Hi Matthias, > > > > I'm not clear on what your goal is. You talk about embedding > > molecule models in PDF, in Latex and in HTML. > > > > Conrad Huang in our lab added Collada export to Chimera so that > > molecular models could be dropped into some ebook format but I'm not > > sure if that format was PDF or something else. Have to find out from > > him. We are also working on displaying 3d views of molecules in a web > > browser using WebGL and Chimera can export an html file for that. Those > > files tend to be large and you need a web browser that supports WebGL to > > view them. The Collada and HTML export are under Chimera menu entry > > File / Export…. The Collada export is in Chimera daily builds and HTML > > export is in Chimera 1.8. > > > > Tom > > > > > > On Jun 19, 2013, at 5:41 AM, "Matthias Barone" wrote: > > > >> Hi > >> I keep on searching for a solution for embedding atomic models in pdf > >> (by LaTex). In PowerPoint a plugin called AxPyMol does the job nicely, > >> but I want to use chimera. You were already discussing a similar topic > >> in > >> http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/pipermail/chimera-users/2008-May/002663.html The > >> question in the topic was whether its possible to incorporate > >> mesh-data (via programs like MeshLab, Photoshop and the movie15 > >> package) into .tex files. > >> But Im searching for latex packages to display and manipulate atomc > >> models. Exporting in html could be a way to desplay everything but > >> electron densities (although html doesnt support mouse gestures) > >> sincerly, matthias > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Chimera-users mailing list > >> Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu <mailto:Chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> > >> http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Chimera-users mailing list > > Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu > > http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users > > > >

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atomic models in pdf
by Matthias Barone 20 Jun '13

20 Jun '13

Hi I keep on searching for a solution for embedding atomic models in pdf (by LaTex). In PowerPoint a plugin called AxPyMol does the job nicely, but I want to use chimera. You were already discussing a similar topic in http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/pipermail/chimera-users/2008-May/002663.html The question in the topic was whether its possible to incorporate mesh-data (via programs like MeshLab, Photoshop and the movie15 package) into .tex files. But Im searching for latex packages to display and manipulate atomc models. Exporting in html could be a way to desplay everything but electron densities (although html doesnt support mouse gestures) sincerly, matthias

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Ensemble cluster
by Damien Larivière 20 Jun '13

20 Jun '13

Dear All, As a preamble, it is quite possible that I completely misunderstood the way to use the Ensemble cluster tool. Here is the problem I face: I opened a PDB file containing 8 models. The models have the same number of atoms, the same numbering, the format is Model Endmdl, etc. I launched Ensemble cluster in order to identify clusters. From the image below, one can see visually 2 clusters. Chimera effectively identifies 2 clusters _but _the representatives of each (in red and blue-turquoise) belongs to the same cluster. I expected one representative in each of the two clusters. May you tell me what is wrong with my understanding? Many thanks for your help, Damien ps : Is there a way to cluster according to a previously chosen RMSD?

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Command line history
by Damien Larivière 20 Jun '13

20 Jun '13

Dear All, I just installed the last release for Windows (June 07, 2013). I would like to get back the command line history I had in the previous version. I saved this command line history in a file named/chimera.cmd/. May you tell where to copy/chimera.cmd/ in the program files of my new Chimera? (I've made a search in the Windows explorer for /chimera.cmd/ but nothing was returned) Thanks, Damien

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Hydrophobicity surface
by Anne Simonsen 19 Jun '13

19 Jun '13

Dear Chimera helpers, I'm trying to make a figure showing the hydrophobic surface of one chain (chain A in attached IGA1.pdb file) with a peptide (chain B) shown as ribbon with residues, but I then get a "hole" in the A surface around the peptide (see attached figure). Can you please advice? Thank you! Best wishes, Anne -- Anne Simonsen, PhD, Professor Dept. of Biochemistry, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences University of Oslo, P.B. 1112 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway Visiting address: Domus Medica, room 3174 Sognsvannsveien 9 0372 Oslo Phone: +47 22 851110 Fax: +47 22 851058 Mobile: +47 99350960 email: anne.simonsen(a)medisin.uio.no http://www.med.uio.no/imb/english/research/groups/autophagy/

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adding an O in compound 1
by Ibai Gazpio 18 Jun '13

18 Jun '13

Hi all, I'm trying to add an O molecule as compound 1 bound to a Fe of an Hem group. I use a program called GOLD to perform dockings but this doesn't recognize this O atom type, that is a O.3 type.. The output should be a mol2 file. Which atom type should I use? Ibai.

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Chimeras limited capability to visualize correctly molecular structure
by Marek Maly 18 Jun '13

18 Jun '13

Hello all, recently was sent to the Amber mailing list question about how to proceed here with simulation of the piece of graphene. I was just curious about the molecular structure so I tried to visualize attached PDB file in Chimera which was not able to show correct structure so I visualized it using VMD and also Vega ZZ in both cases without any problem. Then I used Vega ZZ to create MOL2 file and tried again to use Chimera for visualizing graphene saved now in MOL2 format but again without success. So maybe there is still some space for improvement of Chimera visualizing capability. Especially in case of MOL2 format I was surprised that Chimera is not able to show correct molecular structure as in this case all the information (including bonds/connectivity info) is included in the input file. All files are attached. (my version of Chimera is: candidate version 1.8 (build 38694)) Best wishes, Marek -- Tato zpráva byla vytvořena převratným poštovním klientem Opery: http://www.opera.com/mail/

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Chimera - ball and stick - 3D printing
by Francois Richard 18 Jun '13

18 Jun '13

Hi everyone, I am trying to print a molecule from its PDB file (ID : 2BEG) using chimera and a 3D printer. I would like to print the ball and stick representation of the molecule, including the hydrogen bond. So far, (using this link : http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/Outreach/technotes/ModelGallery/index.html) I played with molmap and volume commands and managed to print a volume but it does not include hydrogen bond. Do you have any idea how to improve the output? Thanks a lot, Francois

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protein schematic representaton
by francesco oteri 14 Jun '13

14 Jun '13

Good morning to everybody, someone of you knows whether exist a program that creates schematic representation of a protein like the one in plot b and d of the figure: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6972/fig_tab/nature02165_F3.html Greetings, Francesco

3 3

Missing segment confuses addH
by Sam Egel 13 Jun '13

13 Jun '13

Hi, Basic Problem: I am attempting to use the addH tool on a metal containing active site I have extracted. The problem is that Chimera draws an 11 angstrom pseudo bond representing a missing segment between two residues. This bond seems to be the reason that a terminal carbon is receiving only two hydrogens rather than three. The pseudo bond runs right through the bond axis between two other carbons, both of which are protonated correctly. Can anyone please explain how to actually delete this bond (hiding through ~longbond, closing or hiding through the pseudo bond panel does not work) or provide another method to get this carbon to have three protons? I'm running v 1.6.2 of Chimera locally on Win 7 and the same problem occurs on a remote Red Hat Enterprise Linux machine running v 1.5 of Chimera. More Detail: Getting this carbon protonated in a one-stop-shop by Chimera would save me the world of time for a number of reasons, including that I need to make many files of this active site and every pdb of this enzyme has the same addH/pseudo bond problem between the same residues. The active site was extracted by writing a 10 angstrom zone around the metal to a pdb and then hand selecting the residues I cared about from there and writing them to a pdb. Workarounds: I have tried using command line ~longbond, hiding and closing out the missing segments option in the pseudo bonds panel, and deleting the bond by highlighting it and trying to delete bond under the adjust bond tab in modify structure window. If I write the pdb to an xyz (Molden) and open the xyz in Chimera, addH works just fine. However, I would really like for these files to be real pdbs that have associated residue names at the moment (residue names are, of course, deleted when converted to xyz). Thank you for your time, Sam

3 2

display of glycine atoms
by Levandoski, Mark 11 Jun '13

11 Jun '13

Hello there - I recently got a new office machine and had to reload Chimera. Although I do not recall the number of the version I had used in the past, empirically I can tell that this is some updated version. My problem is that I am trying to display various residues of a protein selectively as space-filling ("sphere") on a ribbon frame. One residue of interest is a glycine. This version of Chimera seems incapable (or I am incapable of discovering how!) of displaying the various atoms belonging to this glycine residue. All other residues seem fine. Is this a glitch? Am I doing something wrong? For comparison, I have every confidence that this should work because with my older version of the program I was able to generate just such a view. Thank you very much in advance for the help, Mark P.S. By selecting the glycine of interest I am able to color the strip of ribbon by preset color, but not by element. Mark M. Levandoski Associate Professor of Chemistry Grinnell College 641-269-4544

2 2

Selecting regions of a PDB structure
by Anindito Sen 11 Jun '13

11 Jun '13

Dear All, I have a pdb file of a large protein complex. I want to select several regions and color them differently to show the various domains. How can I do that. Thanks Andy Dr. Anindito Sen (Ph.D) >Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy >Graduate School of Medicine >University of Tokyo >Tel & fax: +81-3-5841-3339

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Re: [Chimera-users] movie of flying in a density map
by Tom Goddard 11 Jun '13

11 Jun '13

Hi Andy, The way to use saved positions in an animation is to save a session which includes all the saved positions. Then to make the animation you first open that session and then use the "fly" or "reset" command in a script with those named positions. This is a general method for making animations that works quite well. Setup everything in a session (which models are open, where they are placed, colors, lighting, background color, shadows, …), then just use an animation script to modify a few things. If you instead try to do all the setup in a script with no session it is much harder. I don't understand your question about clipping. Normally Chimera does not clip your maps when you zoom in. Only if you turn on clipping or make your view point move right through the map would you see clipping. Tom On Jun 11, 2013, at 1:07 AM, Anindito Sen wrote: > Hi Tom, > > In the Video tutorial about making a movie of flying through the protein complex - how can I have the positions saved (sav pos) and put it in a script. The idea is to modify a script that makes a density map rotate (which I already have) and then fly in through that. I can then alter the script accordingly to show different regions of the map (and will not need to type the whole set of commands). > > Secondly how can modify my script to zoom-in a density map without clipping the region of interest. It is obvious that a major portion of the map will be outside the view but the clipping plane will not move and clip the map (like when we zoom in manually in the Chimera window using the mouse. > > Thanks > > Andy > >> Dr. Anindito Sen (Ph.D) >> Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy >> Graduate School of Medicine >> University of Tokyo

1 0

ligating two models
by Bala subramanian 06 Jun '13

06 Jun '13

Friends, What is the best method in chimera to ligate two models. I have generated a small ligand that has to be attached attached to a protein residue. Thanks in advance, Bala -- C. Balasubramanian

2 1

Maximum volume size
by Tom Goddard 05 Jun '13

05 Jun '13

Hi Svetla, Chimera is correctly handling your 880x880x880 map. But by default Chimera displays only a single plane of very large maps, because the most common case of this is with tomograms where a single plane display is usually what you want. When it does this the Volume Viewer dialog shows a "Planes" slider in the dialog, and below that is a button "All" that will show all planes. If you want Chimera to always show the full map, use Volume Viewer menu entry Features / Data Display Options, and click off "Show plane when data larger than N Mvoxels", and then use Features / Save Default Dialog Settings so it will use that setting in all future uses of Chimera. Tom On Jun 5, 2013, at 9:54 AM, "Stoilova-McPhie, Svetla" wrote: > Dear Tom, > > Are there any limitation for the size of 3D map/volume the Volume viewer can visualize? > > We tried a 880x880x880 voxels map generated with spider and it comes out as a 2D map: 880x880x1. > WE triple checked and the volume file dimensions are indeed 880x880x880 and can be visualized as a 3D volume in the EMAN2 viewer. > > Please advise. > > Best regards, > > > Svetla Stoilova-McPhie, PhD > Assistant Professor, > Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology > Scientist, Sealy Centre for Structural Biology > and Molecular Biophysics > University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston > 301 University Boulevard, Galveston, Texas 77555-0620

1 0

sementation
by Jingchuan Sun 05 Jun '13

05 Jun '13

Hello, After segmentation of a 3D map into 16 subunits and assign different colors, the saved .seg map does not save the color. During the preparation of our recent paper, we had to assign the color each time we open the .seg (hundreds of times), which make me very upset, even angry sometime. If the guy writing the program allow us to save the assigned color, that would have saved us many times. Thanks! Jim

2 2

Re: [Chimera-users] Flip handedness of map
by Tom Goddard 05 Jun '13

05 Jun '13

Hi Michael, To flip the hand of map #0 use vop zflip #0 This makes a copy of the map with the z-planes in reverse order. Tom On Jun 4, 2013, at 9:09 PM, Michael Stowell wrote: > Tom, > > There used to be a simple way to change the handedness of a map in Chimera, just use a negative voxel number. However, this no longer works but rather gives an error. Is there a new way to achieve this. This is very helpful when assessing the handedness of EM maps. > > Thanks > > m > > Michael H. B. Stowell > MCD Biology and Mechanical Engineering Departments > University of Colorado > Boulder, CO

1 0

Request for assistance
by Zachary W. Carpenter 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

Dear Chimera, I have been a long time user and really love your software. Recently I have used and cited Chimera in 4 high impact publications. One in mBio, two in nature medicine, and a final one in review at Nature Genetics. I have used Chimera to make beautiful images of mutations that we identify in NGS data of tumors. My role has become interpreting the effects of mutations on crystal structure. Thus far this has not been difficult as the effects of the mutations have been obvious. A recent finding however has left me extremely perplexed and I have need for greater accuracy of structural modeling of the mutations. I was wondering if you can put me in the right direction for creating models of mutations that are more reliable then just using Modeller or I-Tasser with the mutant in the sequence to be predicted. I know this is an elaborate question but I'd like to know which Chimera tools I can use to help me along this path. Or if I need to use totally new software/ methods. Thanks for your time, Zach -- Zachary W. Carpenter Department of Pharmacology College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University 630 West 168th Street New York, NY 10032 Email: ZWC2101(a)Columbia.edu

2 3

To build ssDNA to base pair with the other strand of DNA
by Wei Shi 04 Jun '13

04 Jun '13

Hi all, I am working on solving the crystal structure of a protein-DNA complex. I could complete one strand of the DNA to fit the electron density using Coot, but for the other strand, the density for several bases at each end of the DNA is not clear and it's missing several bases at each end of the DNA. I am wondering whether in chimera, there is a function I could use to build the missing bases in one strand of the DNA to base pair with the other strand of DNA which is complete. Thank you so much! Best, Wei

2 2

Re: [Chimera-users] Just starting out
by burt.goldberg＠gmail.com 03 Jun '13

03 Jun '13

Dear Elaine, it is very hard for Senior faculty to audit a class. As for the Biochemistry well I have been teaching it for several decades. My interest is to learn how to use Chimera better and I will be working with a post doc experienced in using Chimera. I just want to read so I can ask intelligent questions. I am employing this in an on going research project. Thank you again for you help. ------Original Message------ From: Elaine Meng To: burt.goldberg(a)gmail.com Cc: chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu List ReplyTo: chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu List Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] Just starting out Sent: Jun 1, 2013 12:53 PM Hi Burt, This forum is meant for questions about the Chimera program. Proteomics and informatics are vastly broader areas. You might want to look for recent textbooks and journal articles on those topics, and/or audit some classes, and/or attend the group meetings and seminars of academic researchers in those areas. It's not clear whether learning Chimera should be one of your goals at this point. Which tools and programs are needed depend on the research problem at hand, and the types of data that are available for tackling that problem. If you do want to learn how to use Chimera, there are indeed several step-by-step tutorials. Before doing any tutorials you can explore the website just to get a better sense of what the program is for: <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/index.html> The "Quick Links" section on that page includes tutorials. Best, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco On Jun 1, 2013, at 9:34 AM, burt.goldberg(a)gmail.com wrote: > Dear all, after 40+ years doing wet work I had to leave the bench, medical reasons, and so although my students continue doing work at the bench I have decide to go the route of proteimics and informatic for myself. The informatics is fine. How do I get started on the proteimics? Does the tutorial help? Any thing some one can suggest I read first? Thank, Burt > Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

2 1

How to calculate the deviation of two ligands in the same pocket
by felipe vasquez 03 Jun '13

03 Jun '13

Hi, I am working on the modeling of one ligand in a native and mutant receptor. The ligand occupies different positions in the binding cavity, and I am interested in estimate this difference. However, if RMSD is calculated via MatchMaker, the ligand in mutant receptor (non-reference) is moved from its original position to try to minimize the deviation compared to ligand in native receptor (reference). How can I calculate the difference in the ligand position between the two receptors, in an appropriate manner? Best regards, * * *Andrés Felipe Vásquez J., MSc.* Grupo de Fisiología Molecular Instituto Nacional de Salud Avenida calle 26 No. 51-20 - Zona 6 CAN Bogotá, D.C., Colombia

2 3

How to force Chimera to properly analyze and visualize in each MD movie frame the ribon representation of the protein structure ?
by Marek Maly 01 Jun '13

01 Jun '13

Dear all, I just found that if one loads several frames from the simulation (Amber prmtop + inpcrd, *.rst files) chimera calculate/set the character of ribons (random colil, beta sheet, alpha helix) just using the first loaded frame and even if structure of the protein is changing in the next frames (e.g. forming beta sheet structure from the originally random coil), the visual ribon representation is not changed. I found this, when I loaded just the isolated frame from the simulation and saw nice forming of the local beta sheet which was nicely highlighted by proper ribon representation (wide arrow) in the palce where was originally (in the initial frame) just random coil. But when I loaded both (initial frame and that after some MD simulation), chimera keep to use random coil representation for both frames. I did also reverse experiment i.e. first loaded later frame from MD simulation and then the initial frame and this time chimera fixed for both frames beta sheet representation in that protein area. Please is there any possibility to prevent such unwanted behavior and to force Chimera that analyses properly protein configuration at each loaded frame and eventually changes properly the ribon representation ? Thank you in advance for any useful advices ! Best wishes, Marek -- Tato zpráva byla vytvořena převratným poštovním klientem Opery: http://www.opera.com/mail/

3 4

fetching EDS files from the web (python script)
by Laleh 31 May '13

31 May '13

Hello. I'm wondering how I can fetch a bunch of EDS files (from the EDS server) and save them in my local machine in .mrc format. I don't want to do this manually one by one from the user interface... I tried to use open_volume_file with different settings; but it is not working... I'm surprised because this is very starightforward with pdb files. I appreciate your help. Thanks in Advance, Laleh

3 2

castP, Chimera and atom numbers
by Boaz Shaanan 30 May '13

30 May '13

Hi, Apparently Chimera insists on consecutive serial atom numbers (the first column after ATOM in the pdb file) when it reads in castp files. If that's not the case (as most often happens when hydrogens are attached during the refinement run but are not written out to the final pdb) Chimera complains about incompatibility between the mouth file and coordinates and refuses to read in the castp files. This is my first encounter with a program that cares about the atom number column but I learnt it the hard way. Cheers, Boaz Boaz Shaanan, Ph.D. Dept. of Life Sciences Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer-Sheva 84105 Israel E-mail: bshaanan(a)bgu.ac.il Phone: 972-8-647-2220 Skype: boaz.shaanan Fax: 972-8-647-2992 or 972-8-646-1710

2 1

Tube representation picture of the eigenvector
by Prasanna Venkatesh 29 May '13

29 May '13

Dear Chimera users and supporters, I would like to generate a tube representation picture similar to one in the article (Figure 5 in "MD Simulations of Papillomavirus DNA-E2 Protein Complexes Hints at a Protein Structural Code for DNA Deformation"). Through Gromacs, I have average.pdb and extreme.pdb of my protein for the MD simulations. Please help me by providing the steps to make the picture. I asked the question earlier but not getting the similar picture with the answer provided. I don't know I asked it right the last time. Thank you in advance. Regards, Prasanna.

3 4

How to deselect a subset of atoms in a non-standard residue
by felipe vasquez 28 May '13

28 May '13

Hi, I am trying to select all hydrogens atoms in a protein structure to achieve an energy minimization process. However, I would like to discard of the selection the hydrogen atoms of a non-standard residue (in my case a cofactor, NADPH). How can I deselect only this subset of hydrogen atoms of the whole hydrogens selection? Best regards, *Andrés Felipe Vásquez J., MSc.* Grupo de Fisiología Molecular Instituto Nacional de Salud Avenida calle 26 No. 51-20 - Zona 6 CAN Bogotá, D.C., Colombia

2 2

How to delete range of solvent molecules
by felipe vasquez 22 May '13

22 May '13

Hi, I am trying to prepare a protein structure for docking, and I want to keep just one or a couple of water molecules. How can I do achieve this goal, deleting the rest of solvent molecules? Thanks in advance. Best regards, * * * * *Andrés Felipe Vásquez J., MSc.* Grupo de Fisiología Molecular Instituto Nacional de Salud Avenida calle 26 No. 51-20 - Zona 6 CAN Bogotá, D.C., Colombia

2 1

Distance measuring
by T-I 22 May '13

22 May '13

Dear Chimera, I want to know something very simple which is making my life very difficult at the moment. I have an EM map of a virus capsid and I would like to make various distance measurements. I simply want to draw a strait line and measure it or place two points on the map and measure the distance between them. I have read all your help files on this matter and I cannot make any sense out of the instructions Can you help me out ? Thankyou Mr A.I

2 1

Fitmap in batch mode
by ingvar 22 May '13

22 May '13

Hello, I am trying to run fitmap on a set of volumes on a server without a display. I would like to collect the results of the top hits to store in a database – correlation coefficients, inclusion scores, and the transforms. The only way I found to collect the fitting results is to save the session after displaying the listFits dialog. The listFits dialog cannot be displayed when running Chimera in –nogui mode, otherwise this would have been a solution. I tried to use a virtual display, with Xvfb. I have used Xvfb with some java applications in the past. When I use Xvfb with Chimera, it appears that Chimera do not want to start up properly, the process just hangs, i.e. no cpu usage. Is there a way around this, or am I asking for an enhancement, e.g. a “writeListFile toFile” option. I am on RHEL 6.2/6.3 if that matter. Noticed that there is a local correlation option in the pipeline for Chimera 1.8, looking forward to try it out. Kind Regards, Ingvar Typical python script: from chimera import runCommand as rc rc("open emd_5500.map") rc("volume #0 level 1.34 transparency 0.5") rc("open emd_2017.map") rc("volume #1 level 0.58 transparency 0.5") rc("fitmap #1 #0 search 200 metric overlap envelope true inside 0.2 listFits false") #rc("fitmap #1 #0 search 200 metric overlap envelope true inside 0.2") rc("save session5500_2017") rc("stop now") Setup to run with Xvfb (in bash): i=0 while [ -f /tmp/.X$i-lock ] do i=$[$i+1] done Xvfb :$i & pid=$! export DISPLAY=:$i chimera fit5500_2017.py kill $pid

2 2

Pipes and planks representation
by Ernesto Arias Palomo 21 May '13

21 May '13

Dear chimera developers, I have noticed that in the last Chimera releases you have significantly improved the 'pipes and planks' representation. I find it particularly useful because, in my opinion, it makes the structures look simpler and clearer, especially when you are displaying large PDBs. I would like to suggest an improvement. It would be really useful if you could make that representation an attribute of the structure (like the 'ribbons' one) instead of a separate object. That way one could easily show, hide or color different regions of the structure without having to modify the actual PDB file. Thank you very much for your help, and congratulations for your great work. Cheers, Ernesto.

2 1

Re: [Chimera-users] RMSD i.b and RMSD u.b
by Elaine Meng 20 May '13

20 May '13

Please send Chimera questions to chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu instead of just my address. The RMSD lb (lower bound) and RMSD ub (upper bound) of a docked ligand are calculated by AutoDock Vina and are described in the manual for that program: <http://vina.scripps.edu/manual.html> (go to that page and search for "RMSD") I believe they just indicate how similar each position is to the best-scoring position found. I hope this helps, Elaine ---------- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco On May 20, 2013, at 6:10 AM, Muhammad ALi <muh.ali741(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > AOA > > sir > when I check my result with ViewDock their are two RMSD values i.e RMSD i.b and RMSD u.b plz tell me about them.....

1 0

3D Printing our protein
by Bart Janssen 20 May '13

20 May '13

Hi My apologies for what are likely to be stupid questions. We are plant developmental biologists and we just obtained our first X-ray crystal structure for a new hormone receptor in plants. We'd really like to make a 3D model of the protein using one of the 3D printers at our institute. I've been trying to use and understand Chimera for the last week and I'm a bit out of my depth :). I can import our protein 4DNP.pdb and display it using solid surface or using the sphere representations of atoms. I can also display it with the "lid" domain hidden and vice versa. My problem has been getting files that our 3D printer can read. The solid surface model of the whole protein can be exported as a scene in .stl format and that can be printed just fine. Although I can't figure out how to adjust resolution or the smoothness of the exported file. But I'd really like to print the two domains of the protein separately. If I use Solid surface model with the lid hidden what I get is an eggshell like model which has no internal detail. If I use atoms shown as spheres instead I get the internal detail I want BUT when I try and export the scene I get a 2 Gb+ file that is unreadable by the printer. If I export .obj format instead the colleague who runs the printer says the file won't load and appears to have errors. I have a horrible feeling I am going about this entirely the wrong way but I can't find a tutorial that describes what I'm trying to achieve. I do realise chimera is not really written for the somewhat trivial use that I am attempting but it really would be helpful if we had a physical model of the protein to look at. Is there a tutorial I should follow or another part of Chimera (or another program) that I should be using instead? Any advice would be much appreciated. Cheers Bart Bart Janssen Scientist Plant Development team Breeding and genomics Plant and Food Research Private Bag 92169 Auckland 1142 New Zealand Ph +64 09 9257179 bart.janssen(a)plantandfood.co.nz The contents of this e-mail are confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. If you are not the intended recipient you must not use, disseminate, distribute or reproduce all or any part of this e-mail or attachments. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender and delete all material pertaining to this e-mail. Any opinion or views expressed in this e-mail are those of the individual sender and may not represent those of The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited.

5 7

showing salt bridges in pdb trajectory movie
by Albert Lyons 18 May '13

18 May '13

Hi all, I am having a problem trying to show salt bridges between selected atoms in a movie of my pdb format trajectory. I am using the following commands in the Per-Frame script, to display H-bonds between the residues but with a less strong distance criterion (to bring the distance of interaction to 6 A) and angle criterion (to make the angle 0deg and so make all angles available): select :1,6,7,10,16,18 findhbond selRestrict :1@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :6@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 :7@O3P,O2P,O1P :10@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :16@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :18@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 linewidth 2 reveal true relax true distSlop 2.97 angleSlop 145 When I apply this script I get a Chimera error saying: Error while sourcing select :1,6,7,10,16,18 findhbond selRestrict :1@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :6@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 :7@O3P,O2P,O1P :10@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :16@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :18@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 linewidth 2 reveal true relax true distSlop 2.97 angleSlop 145 ,line 1: "findhbond selRestrict :1@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :6@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 :7@O3P,O2P,O1P :10@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :16@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :18@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 linewidth 2 reveal true relax true distSlop 2.97 angleSlop 145" Non-alphanumeric character in keyword ':6@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1' I have tried tweaking it different ways but just get other error messages, I can't seem to write it in the correct format. Can anyone see a problem with this script and how I might fix it? Cheers Albie

2 1

showing salt bridges in pdb trajectory movie
by Albert Lyons 18 May '13

18 May '13

Hi all, I am having a problem trying to show salt bridges between selected atoms in a movie of my pdb format trajectory. I am using the following commands in the Per-Frame script, to display H-bonds between the residues but with a less strong distance criterion (to bring the distance of interaction to 6 A) and angle criterion (to make the angle 0deg and so make all angles available): select :1,6,7,10,16,18 findhbond selRestrict :1@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :6@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 :7@O3P,O2P,O1P :10@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :16@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :18@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 linewidth 2 reveal true relax true distSlop 2.97 angleSlop 145 When I apply this script I get a Chimera error saying: Error while sourcing select :1,6,7,10,16,18 findhbond selRestrict :1@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :6@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 :7@O3P,O2P,O1P :10@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :16@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :18@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 linewidth 2 reveal true relax true distSlop 2.97 angleSlop 145 ,line 1: "findhbond selRestrict :1@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :6@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 :7@O3P,O2P,O1P :10@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :16@HZ1,HZ2,HZ3 :18@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1 linewidth 2 reveal true relax true distSlop 2.97 angleSlop 145" Non-alphanumeric character in keyword ':6@2HH2,2HH1,HE,2HH1,1HH1' I have tried tweaking it different ways but just get other error messages, I can't seem to write it in the correct format. Can anyone see a problem with this script and how I might fix it? Cheers Albie

1 1

Re: [Chimera-users] Conserved amino acids
by Rebecca Swett 17 May '13

17 May '13

Use match-> align to get a structural superposition and sequence alignment, then set your alignment type to AL2CO. Go to render by attribute and then hit the select by attribute tab. Select the range from 0-whatever your maximum is. Should be around 4 if you've got any conserved tryptophans. That will select all invariant residues. Jean-Paul Boissel <boissel(a)uni-mainz.de> wrote: >Hi, > >By homology modelling, I got putative structures for five closely related >amino acid transporters. Is there any script that will allow the quick >selection and visualisation of the invariant residues on the structures? >Thanks, > >Jean-Paul > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >Chimera-users mailing list >Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu >http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users

2 1

Conserved amino acids
by Jean-Paul Boissel 17 May '13

17 May '13

Hi, By homology modelling, I got putative structures for five closely related amino acid transporters. Is there any script that will allow the quick selection and visualisation of the invariant residues on the structures? Thanks, Jean-Paul

1 0

Carbon color of 1 chain
by Markus Heller 16 May '13

16 May '13

Hello, I don't seem to be able to figure out how to color a scene by element, but with different carbon colors for different chains. I can't figure out how to get an expression like "color green, chain C C" Or something like that ... How to go about this? Thanks and Cheers Markus -- Markus Heller, Ph.D. NMR Scientist CDRD - The Centre for Drug Research and Development 2405 Wesbrook Mall, Fourth Floor | Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3 | Main: (604) 827-1147 Direct: (604) 827-1122 | F: (604) 827-1299 | E: mheller(a)cdrd.ca<mailto:kessabar@cdrd.ca> | www.cdrd.ca

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Re: [Chimera-users] energy optimization of the modle from homology modeling
by Elaine Meng 16 May '13

16 May '13

Hello, I agree with what Tom Goddard said: "How to make a suitable homology model for docking and what force fields to use are not questions specific to Chimera, they are questions about how to do good quality science, and they depend a great deal on the details of your system. So you aren't likely to get the answers you want on this list." Instead, you have to use your scientific judgement and your knowledge of this protein, how similar it is to the template protein, etc. The procheck statistics are only one thing to consider. One reason is that they are for the whole protein, whereas you mostly care about the binding site. Another is that they focus on stereochemical quality, mainly torsion angles, but not other descriptors such as whether the protein is well packed. You could see what others have done in published papers, and/or ask on the Computational Chemistry List (see <http://ccl.net/cgi-bin/ccl/send_ccl_message>) and the Modeller discussion forum (see <http://salilab.org/modeller/discussion_forum.html>) if it is recommended to minimize homology-modeled structures before docking. In complicated structures like proteins, atoms may "feel" multiple conflicting forces, and minimization will usually relieve some strains (for example, move atoms apart if they are too close together) but increase others (for example, distort the angles of the sidechains containing those atoms). That is why the statistics from procheck got worse. It is important to realize that minimization has very little ability to fix a complicated structure with a rugged energy landscape. It is good for cleaning up small molecules, and sometimes for cleaning up a localized area (leaving the rest of the protein unchanged) where you have made some change such as manually rotating some bonds or mutating a residue. It will not predict any significant conformational change to find the global optimum. If you don't have any specific reason to minimize the structure, it might be better not to minimize it. That is only my guess, and you could probably get more expert opinions by asking your question on the other discussion lists mentioned above. If your docking doesn't take too long, you could try docking to more than conformation of the protein (more than one model). Chimera does not do molecular dynamics, although it can show MD results from other programs. However, Modeller itself does sampling to generate multiple models. Also, you could consider using Modeller to further refine parts of the model(s) from the first Modeller calculation. The Modeller scores should provide some indication of which models and refinements are better. <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/multalignviewer/mo…> I hope this helps, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco On May 14, 2013, at 9:39 AM, Conrad Huang wrote: > Unfortunately, that is getting well beyond my understanding of molecular mechanics. I will have to defer this to our expert when she returns. > > Conrad > > On 5/13/2013 7:56 PM, aixintiankong wrote: >> Dear, >> Thank you for your patience to answer my questions in detail. >> Before /minimizating/ the model, i use the procheck to check the >> quality of the model. the residues in most favoured regions is 95.6% and >> the disallowed regions is 0.0%, the the residues had an averaged 3D-1D >> score>0.2 is 92.02% and the errat is 90.55. >> if i use the chimera to minimizate the model after 200 steps, the >> most favoured regions is 85.5% and the disallowed regions is 0.4%, the >> the residues had an averaged 3D-1D score>0.2 is 99.2% and the errat is >> 95.968. >> if i use the chimera to minimizate the model after 250 using the >> ff99sb! force filed, the most favoured regions is 92.1% and the >> disallowed regions is 0.4%, the the residues had an averaged 3D-1D >> score>0.2 is 96.96% and the errat is 98.000. >> if i use the chimera to minimizate the model after 500ns the most >> favoured regions is 90.8% and the disallowed regions is 0.4%, the the >> residues had an averaged 3D-1D score>0.2 is 96.58% and the errat is 96.047. >> which one model should i select to make docking . >> thank you very much! >> >> At 2013-05-14 00:24:03,"Conrad Huang" <conrad(a)cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote: >>> Unfortunately, our local expert on this is on vacation and will be back >>> at the end of the week, so a more definitive answer should come then. >>> In the mean time, I'll try to answer as best as I can. >>> >>> First, Homology Modeling uses Modeller and that does a bit of >>> optimization already. If the model structure looks reasonable, further >>> energy optimization might be helpful. On the other hand, if the model >>> has extended chains because Modeller does not have appropriate templates >>> or just looks unreasonable because the model is not well packed or has >>> large dangling loops, then energy minimization probably will not help. >>> >>> Second, I do not know the answer, but have you tried using the default >>> paramters? >>> >>> Third, conjugate gradient is much much slower than steepest descent, so >>> it probably pays to use steepest descent to get near the minimum before >>> starting conjugate gradient. You can look at the reported energy values >>> reported to decide whether the minimization is proceeding as expected. >>> Chimera energy minimization is not highly optimized, so it may take a >>> while to run for a large system. If only one portion of the model is >>> "interesting", e.g., an active site, it might be faster to select just >>> the region of interest (plus a buffer around it) and only optimize that >>> part. >>> >>> Hope this helps a bit. Better answers should come later in the week. >>> >>> Conrad >>> >>> On 5/11/2013 6:50 PM, aixintiankong wrote: >>>> Dear, >>>> i am a newer use the chimea, i have some question to consult to you, >>>> please help me. >>>> Frist, after Homology modeling using the chimera modeller, should i >>>> optimizate the modle by energy optimization or Molecular dynamic >>>> simulations? The next step i will use the model to make docking. >>>> Second, i want to use chimera to minimize the structrue of my modle. >>>> i select Tools>Structure Editing>Minimize Structure to perform my >>>> work, but my modle include protein and a organic molecule NAD+, so i >>>> don't know how to select the force fileds for the minimiztion of the >>>> modle. please help me. >>>> Third, if i olny want to use the conjugate gradient to perform the >>>> minimiztion, should i only need to set the steepest descent steps to 0? >>>> in general, how many conjugate gradient s! teps and size should be ? >>>> Thank you very much!

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Error reading PubChem3D SDF Files
by Jon Fuller 15 May '13

15 May '13

I tried to read an SDF file directly downloaded from pubchem into Chimera. However, I ran into the following problem (link to example file used, and reply log below). Is this expected behaviour, or a bug? Additionally I tried to import the pubchem CID 71739 (same compound) from the fetch structure by ID tab, and got the error message: Unexpected end of file (parser state: counts) in MOL/SDF file 'FILEPATH HERE!' Many thanks in advance, Jon http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/vw3d/vw3d.cgi?cmd=crtvw&reqid=2385389770715… You are now running Chimera version 1.8 (build 38642). Your previous version was 1.5 (build 32133). Check the release notes for new features and other info. (To access the release notes, use the Help menu to bring up the User's Guide. Then click the 'Documentation index' link and you will then see a link for the release notes.) Error while processing CID_71739_1183b00000003_conf.sdf: Non-numeric charge (1 -0.36) in PUBCHEM_MMFF94_PARTIAL_CHARGES data Error reading CID_71739_1183b00000003_conf.sdf: Non-numeric charge (1 -0.36) in PUBCHEM_MMFF94_PARTIAL_CHARGES data Error reading CID_3672_e5800000001_conf.sdf: Non-numeric charge (1 -0.65) in PUBCHEM_MMFF94_PARTIAL_CHARGES data Error reading CID_71739_1183b00000003_conf.sdf: Non-numeric charge (1 -0.36) in PUBCHEM_MMFF94_PARTIAL_CHARGES data

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energy optimization of the modle from homology modeling
by aixintiankong 15 May '13

15 May '13

Dear, i am a newer use the chimea, i have some question to consult to you, please help me. Frist, after Homology modeling using the chimera modeller, should i optimizate the modle by energy optimization or Molecular dynamic simulations? The next step i will use the model to make docking. Second, i want to use chimera to minimize the structrue of my modle. i select Tools>Structure Editing>Minimize Structure to perform my work, but my modle include protein and a organic molecule NAD+, so i don't know how to select the force fileds for the minimiztion of the modle. please help me. Third, if i olny want to use the conjugate gradient to perform the minimiztion, should i only need to set the steepest descent steps to 0? in general, how many conjugate gradient steps and size should be ? Thank you very much!

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desmond in chimera
by lecan 15 May '13

15 May '13

Hi to everybody. Can the newest version of Chimera use the .cms files from desmond by schrodinger to analyse trajectories and make movies? Regrads, Luis L.

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surface
by Gesa Volkers 14 May '13

14 May '13

Hi chimera users/developers, I have a problem with a surface calculation from one monomer of a structure that I want to show. As you can see in this image http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/801/testss.png/ it looks like the surface calculation failed (?) because the surface is missing in the middle (note the chewed up structure of the surface). Most of the surface is smooth but for whatever reason not this part of the structure. I have played around with probeRadius, vertex density and zone and they all increase quality but do not add the missing surface part (I'm not even sure if zone is applicable to surfaces at all or only to electron density maps). Any suggestions which parameter I am missing? Thanks for suggestions, Gesa

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Contour maps or step-gradient of volume map?
by Bullitt Esther 13 May '13

13 May '13

Hi, Is it possible to choose n levels of gray for a volume map? I'd like to make a known-thickness slice using clip, and then see that slice as a defined number of colors. I can kluge it by displaying the map 4 times at 4 contour levels, but is there a better way? thanks, Esther --- Esther Bullitt, Ph.D. Dept. of Physiology & Biophysics Boston University School of Medicine 700 Albany Street, Room W302 Boston, MA 02118-2526 Email: bullitt(a)bu.edu Telephone: 617-638-5037 Facsimile: 617-638-4041 http://www.bumc.bu.edu/phys-biophys/faculty/bullitt

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