Interactive 3D protein structure visualization using virtual reality

Abstract

We present a case study that uses high performance workstations and a Virtual Reality display system to process large amounts of geometry data for real-time 3D exploration, superimposition, and interactive navigational tasks in a virtual reality environment.

Virtual Reality in Biology: Can We Become Virtual Naturalists?

“…A number of VMR applications attempt to reproduce the laboratory environment to students with otherwise no access to laboratory facilities, with demonstrated benefits over traditional lectures [see e.g., Labster [22]]. Other VMR applications were designed to give the students an immersive experience of more specific biological processes such as the cell structure [23], spatial orientation [24], and vision formation in animals [25]. Students report higher engagement and learning outcomes with immersive experiences offered by VMR applications, which is encouraging for the use of VMR in biology education [11,13,14,26,27] ( Fig 1).…”

“…Students report higher engagement and learning outcomes with immersive experiences offered by VMR applications, which is encouraging for the use of VMR in biology education [11,13,14,26,27] ( Fig 1). For example, [24] designed an immersive interactive VMR platform for visualisation and teaching of conformation and geometry of protein crystallographic structures, whereby the test group was able to identify characteristics and regions in the samples that were 4 obfuscated in non-immersive programs [24]. Thus, innovative curricula that harness the power of new technologies can provide significant benefits to the teaching and learning of biology [28,29].…”

Visualization of Biomolecular Structures: State of the Art Revisited

“…Very early on, the conceptualization of complex macromolecular assemblies motivated scientists to simplify computer graphics images representing these entities. Visual abstraction of the molecular architecture often shows important structural features more clearly than a full‐detail atomistic representation [MM04], e.g. using abstractions for molecular subunit structures [NCS85].…”

Immersive virtual reality in computational chemistry: Applications to the analysis of QM and MM data

“…The growth of computer power in the last decade made possible to use IVR for rigorous scientific visualization. However, the adoption of IVR tools in molecular sciences is still an ongoing process, even if the usefulness in visualizing large systems of chemical interest (highlighting both structural and functional properties) within immersive environments has already been demonstrated . Recently, Reda et al developed an application for the interactive visualization of MD simulations in ultra‐resolution immersive environments, exploiting an hybrid representation which combines balls‐and‐sticks with volume rendering of approximate electron densities.…”