What are Molecular Structure Presentations?
Molecular structure presentations or tutorials generally consist of a series of author-chosen views of a molecule accompanied by explanatory text and color keys. Interactive presentations, in which the user can rotate each three-dimensional rendering of the molecule using free software, were pioneered by David Richardson with his kinemages in 1992, by Eric Martz using RasMol in 1995, and by Tim Maffett, Henry Rzepa and David Marcy using MDL Chime in 1996. (More is available on the History of Visualization of Biological Macromolecules including the history of Chime.) More recently, bioinformatics databases or software may display results as an annotated molecular structure image. Examples include the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Macromolecular Structure Database (using Cn3D), the automated comparative modeling server SWISS-MODEL (using SwissPDB-Viewer also called DeepView), and XDomView (domain and exon visualization with Chime). None of the foregoing use Protein Expl
