Request for Mathematical Details or Source Code for Helix Axis and Interhelical Distace/Angle Calculations in Chimera

Respected Sir/Madam, My name is Prashant Upadhyay, and I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Molecular Dynamics Simulation at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), India. As part of my research, I am analyzing the structural dynamics of helical membrane proteins using molecular dynamics simulations. I have been using UCSF Chimera extensively for structural analysis. Specifically, I have been utilizing the Structure Analysis → Axes/Planes/Centroids tool to calculate the helix axes of selected helices in my protein of interest. When I select two helices, the Reply Log provides the interhelical distance and angle between the computed axes. This functionality has been incredibly useful for analyzing static structures. To extend this to a dynamic context, I am interested in applying the same axis and angle calculation to each frame of an MD trajectory. For this, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share the mathematical methodology or the relevant portion of the source code that Chimera uses to compute: 1)The helix axis from selected residues 2)The angle and the shortest distance between two helix axes My aim is to replicate this analysis programmatically over the entire simulation trajectory. Any guidance, reference, or code snippet you could provide would be immensely helpful. Thank you, Prashant Upadhyay Ph.D. Student Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur)
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