Chimera Molecular Modeling System

Chimera is an interactive molecular graphics program developed by the Computer Graphics Lab at UCSF. It can be used as a helper application for several types of files linked to web pages. For each search result, ModBase provides a link that uses Chimera to show the modeled structure, the template Protein Data Bank structure, and an alignment of their sequences.

Downloading Chimera

 Chimera is available free of charge for academic, government, non-profit, and personal use. It can be obtained from the Chimera download page. Chimera versions 1.1951 and later will work with the data in ModBase.

If you already have Chimera, you need to determine its version. From the Chimera Help menu, choose the entry called "Version Info" or "About UCSF Chimera." You should see something like: 
   UCSF Chimera, official version 1 build 1951 2004/05/11

If the build number is 1951 or greater:
Nothing needs to be done. Your copy of Chimera will work with ModBase.

If the build number is less than 1951:
Your copy of Chimera is too old to work with ModBase. Download the newest version of Chimera.

Using Chimera with ModBase

This data can be accessed for a ModBase search result by choosing "Launch Chimera" in the pulldown menu. For information on how to use this feature in Chimera, please see the Web Data section of the Chimera documentation.