Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure to talk to Thomas Holder, the PyMOL Principal Developer at Schrödinger, on possible integration of DSSR into PyMOL. On Tuesday April 21, 2015, I wrote to Thomas:
Last year, I had the please to collaborate with Dr. Robert Hanson to integrate DSSR into Jmol, see
http://chemapps.stolaf.edu/jmol/jsmol/dssr.htm. I am wondering if you have any interest in connecting DSSR to PyMOL. This will not only benefit both parties, but also bring elaborate analyses of RNA structures to the general audience. As you may be aware, RNA is becoming increasing important, yet the field of RNA structural bioinformatics is lagging (far) behind that of proteins.
After a few meet-ups, we all agree that the DSSR-PyMOL integration project would be meaningful/significant for RNA structural bioinformatics. Moreover, the community not only can benefit from the end result, but also should be able to make direct contributions through the process. On Friday May 08, 2015, Thomas sent out the following open invitation, titled Someone interested in writing a DSSR plugin for PyMOL?, to the PyMOL mailing list:
Is anyone interested in writing a DSSR plugin for PyMOL? DSSR is an integrated software tool for Dissecting the Spatial Structure of RNA (http://x3dna.bio.columbia.edu/docs/dssr-manual.pdf). Among other things, DSSR defines the secondary structure of RNA from 3D atomic coordinates in a way similar to DSSP does for proteins. Most of its output could be translated 1:1 into PyMOL selections, making it available for coloring and other selection based features. A PyMOL plugin could act as a wrapper which runs DSSR for an object or atom selection. Xiang-Jun Lu, the author of DSSR, is also working on base pair visualization (see http://home.x3dna.org/articles/seeing-is-understanding-as-well-as-believing), similar to (but more advanced) what’s already available from 3DNA (http://pymolwiki.org/index.php/3DNA).
Xiang-Jun would be happy to collaborate with someone who has experience with Python and the PyMOL API for writing an extension or plugin. Please contact me if this sounds appealing to you.
Get DSSR from http://home.x3dna.org/
See it hooked up with JSmol: http://chemapps.stolaf.edu/jmol/jsmol/dssr.htm
If you are self-motivated, care about software quality, have expertise in writing PyMOL plugin, and feel the pain in RNA structural analysis/visualization with currently available tools, now it is the time to make a difference. The DSSR/PyMOL project would ideally be composed of a team of dedicated practitioners with complementary skills. We will communicate mostly via email or online forum, in a presumably open and highly interactive way. By working on the project, you will be able to sharpen your skills and make new friends. The end product would not only make RNA structural bioinformatics easier for yourself but also benefit the community at large.
