Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Manipulation
Power
Low
High
High
High
High
Hardware
Requirements
Low/Moderate
High
High
Moderate
High
Ease of Use
High; command-
line language
Moderate
Moderate
High
Moderate;
command-line
language and GUI
Special Features
Small size; very
easy to install
and use;
established user
base; highly
portable
Powerful;
GUI
Powerful;
GUI; ray-
tracing
option
Powerful; GUI
Powerful; GUI;
built-in
extensions for
collaboration
Output Quality
Moderate
Very high
High
High
Very high
Documentation
Good
Good
Limited
Good
Very good
Support
Online and users
groups
Online and
users
groups
Online and
users
groups
Online and
users groups
Online and users
groups
Speed
High
Moderate
Moderate
Moderate
Moderate/Slow
OpenGL Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Extensibility
No
No
Yes;
supports
Python
No
Highly extensible;
supports Python
Operating
Systems
Universal
Universal
Universal
Universal
Universal
The selection of a protein structure rendering program should be a function of ease of use, power,
speed, special features, cost, hardware requirements, documentation and support, and overall
functionality. For example, rendering 3D protein structures can be extremely computationally
intensive. The more complex the rendering output, the greater the computational load, and the more
time required to render each image. Often, time and performance limitations dictate the use of a
simple, fast rendering package such as RasMol (see
Figure 5-6
) for day-to-day rendering, and one of
the higher-end packages, such as Chimera, for publication-quality output.
Figure 5-6. Rendering Output from RasMol. RasMol is one of the oldest and
easiest to use molecular rendering programs available for bioinformatics
work. This example shows the basic display options available. The molecule
is Deoxy Hemoglobin.
