UCSF ChimeraX

UCSF ChimeraX (or simply ChimeraX) is the next-generation molecular visualization program from the Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics (RBVI), following UCSF Chimera. ChimeraX can be downloaded free of charge for academic, government, nonprofit, and personal use. Commercial users, please see licensing.

ChimeraX is developed with support from National Institutes of Health R01-GM129325 and the Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Feature Highlight

Curved Helix Cylinders

Protein α-helices can be shown as curved-cylinder “tubes“ with the cartoon style command. Helix tube mode is an alternative to the standard spiraling ribbons, and both modes are fully integrated with coil and β-strand cartoons. The structure at left is an AMPA-subtype glutamate receptor bound to the antiepileptic drug perampanel (PDB 5l1f). The receptor is tetrameric, and each chain is rainbow color-coded from blue at the N-terminus to red at the C-terminus. Four molecules of perampanel (pink) are bound near the bottom, between the transmembrane domain and the rest of the receptor. For image setup other than orientation, see the command file ampar.cxc.

See also: Presets menu

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Example Image

Photosynthetic Reaction Center

The photosynthetic reaction center from a purple sulfur bacterium is shown as a cartoon with “tube” helices and membrane boundaries from the OPM database (Orientations of Proteins in Membranes, entry 1eys). Blue and red balls represent the cytoplasmic and periplasmic sides of the bacterial inner membrane, respectively. The title and other text labels were added with the 2dlabels command and repositioned interactively with the move label mouse mode . ChimeraX session file: prc.cxs

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