Welcome

Introduction

Molecular Biology is a booming science with enormous scope and potential. In many ways its current status can be compared with the early days of the computer industry: it has the capacity to change quite fundamentally the way we approach certain key technologies, such as medicine and manufacturing. It is now the time to develop new tools in order to deal with the vast amount of data which is available and with the inherent complexity of living organisms. Therefore, repositories, models and simulation tools are necessary.

A first step towards discovery tools specific to life sciences is to represent in 3D all the components of a living system. Such a 3D visualization tool enables to map cell components and to navigate within the cell at various scales from a complete cell down to a single macromolecule at atomic detail.

The Foundation Fourmentin-Guilbert initiated a first prototype to map molecular components of a bacterial cell E. coli. It deals with the representation of a volume (representing a part of the cell volume) and the integration of 3D reconstructions of biomolecules from various databases. One can navigate in this volume in all directions at two different observation scales.

Features

The first release includes:

• 3D immersive navigation within a complete cell

• An dedicated environment to build 3D molecular assemblies

• A library of 3D objects

Future versions will bring :

• 3D reconstruction from heterogeneous data sources (e.g. PDB files, microscopy images) at different scales,

• Links to biological component and process databases

Project organisation

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Software

,  It runs on Windows XP and Vista and requires a 3D graphic card.