Mol* Viewer: modern web app for 3D visualization and analysis of large biomolecular structures

Area of Science:

• Structural biology
• Computational biology
• Biophysics

Background:

• Experimental determination of large biomolecular structures is increasing.
• Emerging integrative/hybrid methods (I/HM) generate massive macromolecular models.
• Existing visualization tools face performance limitations with large datasets.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce Mol* Viewer, a next-generation web-native 3D visualization tool.
• To combine and enhance the strengths of previous viewers (LiteMol and NGL Viewer).
• To provide high-performance visualization for large and complex biomolecular structures.

Main Methods:

• Development of a web-native 3D viewer (Mol*).
• Integration of features from LiteMol and NGL Viewer.
• Implementation of high-performance graphics and data management.

Main Results:

• Mol* Viewer enables 3D visualization and streaming of macromolecular data.
• It supports displaying structure quality, functional, and biological context.
• High-performance capabilities allow simultaneous visualization of hundreds of structures, trajectories, and large I/HM models.

Conclusions:

• Mol* Viewer is the primary 3D structure viewer for PDBe and RCSB PDB.
• It is easily integrable into third-party services.
• The open-source Mol* Viewer is freely available for broad scientific use.