RasMol

RasMol is a computer program written for molecular graphics visualization intended and used primarily for the depiction and exploration of Structural biology, such as those found in the Protein Data Bank. It was originally developed by Roger Sayle.

Historically, it was an important tool for molecular biologists since the extremely optimized program allowed the software to run on (then) modestly powerful personal computers. Before RasMol, visualization software ran on graphics workstations that, due to their expense, were less accessible to scholars.

Rasmol has a convoluted version history. Starting with the series of 2.7 versions, Rasmol, along with PyMOL, is among the few open source molecular visualization programs available. Rasmol includes a computer_languages (for selecting certain protein chains, or changing colors etc).

Protein Databank (PDB) files can be downloaded for visualization from the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) bank. These have been uploaded by researches who have characterized the structure of molecules usually by X-ray crystallography or Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.

=Links=

[http://www.freerasmol.org/ FreeRasMol]

[http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/ Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein data bank]