Chimera is our next generation molecular graphics application whose main design goals are extensibility and ease of use. Chimera is being written in Python with C++ extensions and uses commonly accepted specifications such as Tk and OpenGL. In addition, Chimera also uses the locally developed Object Technology Framework. Chimera was significantly overhauled to improve portability and performance. During the overhaul period, we also implemented roughly 75% of the functionality offered by MidasPlus, our previous modeling system. A number of extensions to Chimera were also implemented. The Multiple Sequence File Viewer (MSFViewer) and structure alignment viewer (AlignPlot) report were augmented to interact through the Chimera selection mechanism. Two new extensions, ViewDock and HearDock, were implemented to display and sonify docking results, which include a set of candidate model orientations and their scores. Finally, in a follow-up to the proof-of-concept implemented using MidasPlus, we are in the design stages of implementing a collaboratory using Chimera. The development of Chimera also inspired the implementation of other development tools. For example, we implemented a program which takes as input a C++ library interface and generates the necessary code to make the functionality available in Python, which is the both a development and command language for Chimera.
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