February 2021 - ChimeraX-users - RBVI Mailing Lists

Focus in ChimeraX
by Luca Pellegrini 10 Oct '25

10 Oct '25

Hi, What is the ChimeraX equivalent to the Focus command in Chimera? I have selected a portion of a structure, and would like to bring it into focus without dragging it into view. Also Focus would automatically set the selection as the pivot point. Best wishes, Luca Luca Pellegrini, PhD Department of Biochemistry University of Cambridge Cambridge CB2 1GA lp212(a)cam.ac.uk

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Surface dust command in the .cxc script
by 李泽 24 Feb '25

24 Feb '25

Hi all: I'm trying to use the .cxc script to run the software, I found that the "surface dust" command has never been executed in it. Have anyone met the same problem? Any suggestions. Thank you all. Best, Ze

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Get color code of a custom color
by Ahmad Khalifa 11 Feb '25

11 Feb '25

I created a custom color that I want to use in a different session. is there a way to do that besides trying to match colors by eye? Regards.

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Double and Triple Bond Stick Style
by Smith, Chase 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

Dear ChimeraX, I was just wondering why there is no way to represent a double or triple bond in either the ligands or the protein amino acids when viewing as a Stick or Ball-and-Stick representation? I sometimes use Chimera or ChimeraX to make visuals for my lectures, and the students often have difficulty in understanding due to the absence of the multiple bonds. I would love to have the ability to represent the double or triple bonds with multiple lines between the atoms. Thank you, Chase Smith ... ChaseSmith, PhD Chair, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences & Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry School of Pharmacy MCPHS University 19 Foster Street | WorcesterMA01608 T 508.373.5717F 508.890.5618C 978.855.7203 chase.smith(a)mcphs.edu www.mcphs.edu MCPHS University Confidentiality Note: This e-mail, and any attachment to it, is intended to be confidential and might be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the use of the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that reading, copying, disseminating or distributing this email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately return it to the sender and delete it from your system. Thank you.

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Quest 2 Support?
by Blaine Hewitt 27 Dec '24

27 Dec '24

Hello, my name is Blaine Hewitt. Now I know that you have stated previously that you have no intention of bringing support to the Oculus Quest. Which is completely understandable since I know that not only would you have to develop around a completely new Operating System but another CPU architecture and much much more I assume. But with the soon release of the Oculus Quest 2 and it's new XR 2 chip-set makes a pretty good argument for it. As this would allow for much easier use in education (as is what I am attempting to do with it). I think it will be even easier now to push updates with SideQuest <https://sidequestvr.com/> being relatively simple to setup. I know that another (Naome <https://blog.matryx.ai/nanome-on-quest-public-beta-is-now-available-b546321…>) program is already available on the platform. But I do like your program a lot more since it is able to be used for free unlike Nanome Pricing <https://nanome.ai/pricing/> which is... as to say unappealing to public schools (such as mine). I was was also thinking (sorry if I am becoming annoying at this point) that if you do make a version of the Quest that you could make that GitHub branch available to the public. As for example while I may not be great at understanding complex protein structures I can help to make the whole experience more user friendly. Anyways if you read this far thank you for taking time from your day to read this. If you want to know who I am, my name is Blaine I am in my senior year of High School (Waynecsd <https://wh.waynecsd.org/>). I have to do a project by the end of the year where I have to present an area of study I want to pursue and I decided to research the effects of VR on the human's ability to learn and retain information. Budget..... None

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Accessing shapes created through a .BLD script
by Tanmoy Sanyal 03 Mar '21

03 Mar '21

Hi, I have a bunch of shapes (spheres and cylinders) created through a .bld script. I'd like to load this script once, and then be able to change the colors of said shapes in successive operations. It is possible to set the colors directly in the .bld script, but I need to make an animation out of this. E.g: if my .bld script contains lines that draws shapes like so: .sphere 0 0 -1 5.0 .cylinder 0 0 0 1 1 1 1.0 I want to be able to later have a bunch of scripts called 1.cxc, 2.cxc, 3.cxc, .... each of which change the color of the sphere and cylinder. This way, I can load these scripts in the per-frame mode, to create an animation out of the color changes. Alternatively, I tried doing this with just the shape command and without a .bld script, but I have over ~10000 shapes; the shape command interprets each as a different model, and my computer hangs. ----- Thanks, Tanmoy Tanmoy Sanyal Postdoctoral scholar, Sali lab <https://salilab.org/>, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences <https://bts.ucsf.edu/>, University of California San Francisco Phone:- (+1) 805-637-0375

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Re: [chimerax-users] [Chimera-users] calculating % exposed surface area
by Tom Goddard 25 Feb '21

25 Feb '21

Hi Elaine, Good point. Forgot ChimeraX computes SAS area and not SES area. It makes more sense from a science perspective to use SAS I think -- the functionally relevant quantity is how much room there is for a ligand to be in contact and I think SAS will better reflect that than SES, although the correlation is no doubt very high between SES and SAS areas. Tom > On Feb 25, 2021, at 10:40 AM, Elaine Meng <meng(a)cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote: > > Currently it is not possible to use ChimeraX for this specific workflow, however, because it does not calculate residue solvent-excluded surface (SES) area values. The values supplied for normalization in that page (to calculate % exposed) are SES calculated with the Chimera parameters. These were kindly supplied by another group, as cited in that page. > <https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/surfnorm.html > > > The ChimeraX command "measure sasa" measures solvent-accessible surface (SAS) area and can assign the per-residue and per-atom values as attributes. > <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/measure.html#sasa> > > Theoretically somebody could generate the GXG tripeptides as proxy for the fully exposed state and measure SAS for each X in ChimeraX to compile a list of suitable values for normalization to calculate % exposed, but as far as I know, it hasn't been done. > > Here's diagram showing the difference between SES and SAS for those who may not be familiar with these terms: > <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/surface.html#surfdefs> > > Elaine > > >> On Feb 25, 2021, at 9:54 AM, Tom Goddard <goddard(a)sonic.net> wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> Maybe your structure has ligands, ions, or solvent atoms -- no surface is computed for those and so they don't get an areaSES attribute. You could put in a check >> >> if hasattr(r, 'areaSES'): >> r.relSESA = r.areaSES/ r.areaSESgxg >> else: >> print 'Residue has no areaSES', r, 'type', r.type >> >> You might be interested instead using our newer program ChimeraX. Chimera often fails to compute molecular surfaces and SES areas for large structures. ChimeraX uses new code that always works. >> >> Tom >> >> >>> On Feb 25, 2021, at 5:53 AM, David Leeming <david.leeming(a)student.manchester.ac.uk> wrote: >>> >>> Dear Chimera users, >>> I'm attempting to write a chimera script to automate the process of calculating the relative exposure of residues as per this tutorial: https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/surfnorm.html >>> >>> The script I have is as follows: >>> rc('surface') # defines areaSES of residues >>> rc('defattr C:/Users/Admin/Downloads/areaSESgxg.txt log 0') # define attribute using areaSESgxg.txt >>> for m in chimera.openModels.list(modelTypes=[chimera.Molecule]): >>> for r in m.residues: >>> r.relSESA = r.areaSES/ r.areaSESgxg >>> >>> However, when I run this script, I am receiving this error: >>> <Outlook-1he3xhiv.png> >>> When I run the process using the UI I can successfully calculate relSESA >>> By using the command: "surface" >>> Then using the assign attribute function to assign areaSESgxg.txt >>> Followed by using the calculate attribute function to calculate per residue: residue.areaSES/ residue.areaSESgxg >>> >>> Could you advise on any methods I could use to fix this script to produce the output I am receiving from the UI. >>> >>> Kind regards, >>> David >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Chimera-users mailing list: Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu >>> Manage subscription: https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Chimera-users mailing list: Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu >> Manage subscription: https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users > > > _______________________________________________ > Chimera-users mailing list: Chimera-users(a)cgl.ucsf.edu > Manage subscription: https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/mailman/listinfo/chimera-users >

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Save a new map with trimmed zones (vop zone command)
by Steven Truong 24 Feb '21

24 Feb '21

Dear ChimeraX Admin., Hello, I was hoping for some help on the save function for an electron-density map (.mrc file). I have a density map (#0) that I trim using: vop zone #0 nearAtoms #1 range 6 Essentially, I want to remove all the electron density that is not close to my structure (.pdb) #1. Anything farther than 6 angstroms disappears, as expected. However, when I proceed to do: save newmap.mrc #0 I get the original map with the electron density I don’t want anymore. It doesn’t seem like I can save the changes to the map, even though I see the changes in the interface. It seems to want to save everything, ignoring the vop command. Is there something else I’m missing here? Thank you for your help, Steven Truong Cambridge University sdt45(a)cam.ac.uk<mailto:sdt45@cam.ac.uk>

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Generate the .dssp file in ChimeraX ?
by Gupta, Arun 24 Feb '21

24 Feb '21

Hi, Can we generate the .dssp file output using ChimeraX based on my PDB structure as an Input.. Thanks!!! Arun Arun Gupta PhD, MRSC Research Fellow Challis & Lewandowski Group Chemistry Department University of Warwick Gibbet Hill Road Coventry CV4 7AL United Kingdom

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.chimerax and PhosphoSitePlus
by Daniel Gurnon 24 Feb '21

24 Feb '21

Hi all, I'm interested in visualizing post translational modified positions in Chimera or ChimeraX, using the script generated by PhosphoSitePlus (PSP). I'm not able to get it working though, so I hope you can help: Here's an example of a page with an available Chimera script. <https://www.phosphosite.org/proteinAction.action?id=4103&showAllSites=true> >From what I read in the documentation <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/1.10/docs/webservices.html> about web services, I should be able to click the script, and it will open in a locally running instance of Chimera. However, in Chrome, my only option is to download the script. When I download and then try to open the script in ChimeraX (v 1.1), it tells me the ".chimerax" file type is not recognized. When I try to open it in the original Chimera (v1.15), I get the infinite spinning wheel of rainbows. These things occur whether or not I have the reference PDB structure loaded. Just to see what would happen, I also tried pasting the first command from the .chimerax file (*setattr a label Ser-89 :88.A@OG*) into Chimera and ChimeraX. The command executed successfully in Chimera, but in ChimeraX, I get the error setattr a label Ser-89 :88.A@OG Expected a keyword Thanks in advance for the assistance, Dan ____________________________ Daniel Gurnon, Ph. D. Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry DePauw University Greencastle, IN 46135

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