ProteinVR: Web-based molecular visualization in virtual reality

by Kevin C. Cassidy, Jan Šefčík, Yogindra Raghav, Alexander Chang, Jacob D. Durrant Protein structure determines biological function. Accurately conceptualizing 3D protein/ligand structures is thus vital to scientific research and education. Virtual reality (VR) enables protein visualization in stereoscopic 3D, but many VR molecular-visualization programs are expensive and challe nging to use; work only on specific VR headsets; rely on complicated model-preparation software; and/or require the user to install separate programs or plugins. Here we introduce ProteinVR, a web-based application that works on various VR setups and operating systems. ProteinVR displays molecular s tructures within 3D environments that give useful biological context and allow users to situate themselves in 3D space. Our web-based implementation is ideal for hypothesis generation and education in research and large-classroom settings. We release ProteinVR under the open-source BSD-3-Clause lice nse. A copy of the program is available free of charge from http://durrantlab.com/protein-vr/, and a working version can be accessed at http://durrantlab.com/pvr/.
Source: PLoS Computational Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: research