December 2020 - ChimeraX-users - RBVI Mailing Lists

Bottleneck Large Surfaces
by Anderson, Jacob 04 Jan '21

04 Jan '21

With large colored surfaces of maps ~2.4GB, I experience a lag/delay of several seconds during rotation and translation. Is it obvious where the bottleneck might be that causes the lag? I am running ChimeraX on a 3090 gpu w/ 128gb ram, & 12 core CPU. Might there be ways to change other graphics settings to make the manipulations have a less observable delay? ~jacob

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Computing protein cavities
by Y. Mutum 29 Dec '20

29 Dec '20

Hi This question is on calculating empty cavities of large protein complexes (~2 MDa) For example, the pdb-id: 6J5K. I have tried a few webservers and they are ignoring to calculate such large protein-pdb files as a whole. Does ChimeraX have tools that can be installed from the 'More-Tools' or an inbuilt one to calculate protein cavities in ChimeraX? If you could suggest external programs for computing cavities, that are reliable for such large protein-inputs, it would be also of a great help. The cavities need not be sealed by proteins all around - they can still be open to the bulk solvent. Thanks Yaikhomba

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ChimeraX "color by conservation" tutorial
by Elaine Meng 29 Dec '20

29 Dec '20

In case anyone is interested, there's a new tutorial on coloring by sequence conservation using ChimeraX (requires version 1.1 or newer). It has click-to-execute links if you view it in the ChimeraX built-in browser. <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/data/conservation-coloring/conservation-…> Happy holidays! Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Chimera(X) team Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco

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setting up mousemode - translate z - set pivot
by Helge Paternoga 22 Dec '20

22 Dec '20

Hi Elaine and Tom, Thanks for the explanations, that was very helpful. The build-in shift functionality indeed explains the translate/rotate behaviour! For me the shift button + "reversed" translate/rotate functions work perfectly, so I guess I will keep it that way. Is there anything else that speaks against it? For fitting, I am dealing with ribosomes and I have come to align the map I am fitting into in a way that makes the features clearly distinguishable (i. e. the straight solvent side of the large subunit viewed from the side), then I just move in my new map rotate to align the features and dump it using the z translate until it is in the other map, followed by fit in map. I was contemplating on how much I should stick to my old habits vs. trying new behaviours that might be more effcient in the long run. It is clear that ChimeraX offers many new opportunities for improving the workflow, but for now I like to keep my old logic (which cleary comes from using Chimera for a long time). I like to have three separate keys for rotating - xy translating - z translate that can be modified for the selected model (or dragged, will look into that). Therefore, I came up with the following setup: mousemode shift leftMode 'translate selected models' mousemode shift middleMode 'rotate selected models' mousemode shift wheel contour mousemode setting contour speed 0.1 mousemode control wheel 'translate selected models' mousemode setting zoom speed -1 fun F1 cofr sel camera ortho set bgColor grey lighting soft This actually leaves the right mouse button completely free and I was already wondering what could be a good function to map here! An unrelated observation that I had was that with grey background the selection rectangle while holding control is not visible on the background anymore (It works with white and black). Helge

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setting up mousemode - translate z - set pivot
by Helge Paternoga 21 Dec '20

21 Dec '20

Dear ChimeraX users, I am currently using the homeoffice time to finally get into ChimeraX, coming from Chimera. I just discovered "mousemode" and am trying to set up the controls to my liking. My goal is to make the fitting process of models and volumes into cryo-EM maps as smooth as possible. Currently, I use the following commands which are entered in the "execute these commands at startup" option in the settings => Is this the best way to permanently change the key-mapping? I could not find an .ini file, yet. mousemode shift leftMode 'translate selected models' mousemode shift middleMode 'rotate selected models' mousemode rightMode zoom mousemode shift wheel contour mousemode setting contour speed 0.1 My idea is to have the following set up: left mouse - turn all models (default) middle mouse - translate xy (default) right mouse - zoom shift left mouse - turn selected model shift middle mouse - translate xy selected model shift right mouse - translate z selected model scroll wheel - contour volume control right mouse - set pivot on selected model Turning and translating the models works well, also while holding shift for the selected model. As a side note, 'translate selected models' rotates the selected models in place whereas 'rotate selected models' translates in xy, is this intentional? => I would like to move the selected model in the z direction with the right mouse button while holding shift, is there an option for "translate z" ? => I am often re-setting the pivot point, therefore I would like to bind this function ("Set Pivot") to the mouse as well, does this option exist? I tried "pivot" but it did not work for cryo-EM volumes. Many thanks for reading, Helge

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Showing waters changes lighting
by Daniel Asarnow 18 Dec '20

18 Dec '20

Hi all, I have a few maps and models loaded, which have a couple hundred water molecules. When I display all the waters using 'show :HOH' the lighting changes. It makes "soft" look like "flat" and creates what looks like more ambient reflection in "full" or "simple." I embedded some screenshots below. My guess is something about a depth or lighting calculation is affected by all the waters, does anyone recognize what setting would need to change to correct this? Soft, shadows false: [image: image.png] Same after show :HOH [image: image.png] Full, shadows false [image: image.png] Same after show :HOH [image: image.png] Best, -da

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Holiday greetings from the ChimeraX team!
by Elaine Meng 18 Dec '20

18 Dec '20

The Chimera(X) team at the UCSF RBVI wishes you a safe and happy holiday season! Our holiday card is virtual this year: =-=-=-=-=-= Atoms of Apoferritin At a miraculous 1.22 Å resolution, the electron microscopy map of mouse apoferritin (right, EMDB 11638) can be mistaken for an atomic model (left, PDB 7a4m), with each atom standing out. The map from Nakane et al. (2020 Nature 587:152-156) shows glimpses of the lightest atoms, hydrogen, directly revealing the hydrogen-bonding network. Ferritin stores iron, as many as 4500 ions (Fe3+), as crystallites within its shell of 24 proteins. Apoferritin, ferritin without its iron cargo, has rock-like stability, making it ideal for divining the limits of electron microscope resolution. The images were made with UCSF ChimeraX, using ambient-occlusion lighting, coloring to delineate trimeric subunits within the dodecahedral shell, and curved helix tubes. Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2021! Conrad, Greg, Elaine, Tristan, Tom, Scooter, Eric and Tom =-=-=-=-=-= Full-resolution image: <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/Outreach/card-gallery/2020-apoferritin/2020a.png <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/Outreach/card-gallery/2020-apoferritin/2020a.png>> Gallery of previous cards back to 1985: <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/Outreach/card-gallery/index.html <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/Outreach/card-gallery/index.html>>

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inaccurate color box in the Models panel
by Daniel Larsson 17 Dec '20

17 Dec '20

Hi all, I'm trying to color multiple models in the same color using the color column in the Models panel. When I use the eye-droppper in the macOS colors panel, which pops up when I click on the color box, and then sample the middle of another color box, it gives me a slightly different RGB value. For example, if I start out with (209,35,16), what I get is (206,31,0). Another way of saying it is, if I sample the same color box with the eye-dropper repeatedly, the color changes. I can start out with a bright red color and then repeatedly sample the same box over and over and the color becomes a dark brown. What's up with this? Is it the macOS doing something with the colors of the boxes? Related, is there a way of getting the current RGB color of a model (or all models)? Thanks in advance! Regards, Daniel När du har kontakt med oss på Uppsala universitet med e-post så innebär det att vi behandlar dina personuppgifter. För att läsa mer om hur vi gör det kan du läsa här: http://www.uu.se/om-uu/dataskydd-personuppgifter/ E-mailing Uppsala University means that we will process your personal data. For more information on how this is performed, please read here: http://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/data-protection-policy

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Extract TIFF images from a density map
by Andrea Dallapè 15 Dec '20

15 Dec '20

Hi all, I really hope that you all are healthy and safe. I would like to ask you if there is a method/command script to extract TIFF images from a density map. Basically, I used the "plane" option in Volume Viewer to see all the planes contained in the map. Now I would like to extract all the planes in TIFF images. Is this possible? Could you suggest to me how to deal with it? Thank you for your kind attention. Have a great day, Andrea

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Batch save the image of each chain
by Yong Liu 12 Dec '20

12 Dec '20

Hi All, I would like to save the image of each chain in one command. I have wrote following python code, but it is not working. Is anybody know how to fix it? # save the image of each chain def batchSave(session): chainID_list = info chains for x in chainID_list: chainID = chainID_list.split() ID = chainID[-1] save "Desktop/ID.png" width 4000 height 4000 transparentBackground true def register_command(session): from chimerax.core.commands import CmdDesc, register desc = CmdDesc() register('batchSave', desc, batchSave, logger=session.logger) register_command(session) Best, Yong Liu

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ChimeraX-users December 2020