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Updated: Dec 29, 2025

Atomic Scale Structural Studies of Macromolecular Assemblies by Solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Published on: September 17, 2017
PyShifts: A PyMOL Plugin for Chemical Shift-Based Analysis of Biomolecular Ensembles
Jingru Xie1, Kexin Zhang2, Aaron T Frank3
1Physics Department, University of Michigan, 930 North University Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, United States.
Abstract:
Here, we present PyShifts-a PyMOL plugin for chemical shift-based analysis of biomolecular ensembles. With PyShifts, users can compare and visualize differences between experimentally measured and computationally predicted chemical shifts. When analyzing multiple conformations of a biomolecule with PyShifts, users can also sort a set of conformations based on chemical shift differences and identify the conformers that exhibit the best agreement between measured and predicted chemical shifts. Although we have integrated PyShifts with the chemical shift predictors LARMORD and LARMORCα, PyShifts can read in chemical shifts from any source, and so, users can employ PyShifts to analyze biomolecular structures using chemical shifts computed by any chemical shift predictor. We envision, therefore, that PyShifts (https://github.com/atfrank/PyShifts) will find utility as a general-purpose tool for exploring chemical shift-structure relationships in biomolecular ensembles.
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