- Chimera-users - RBVI Mailing Lists

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

3 2

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 02 Aug '13

02 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

3 2

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 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '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.

4 6

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 18 Jul '13

18 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

3 5

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

2 1