UCSF Chimera is a highly extensible program for interactive visualization and analysis of molecular structures and related data, including density maps, supramolecular assemblies, sequence alignments, docking results, trajectories, and conformational ensembles. High-quality images and animations can be generated. Chimera includes complete documentation and several tutorials, and can be downloaded free of charge for academic, government, non-profit, and personal use. Chimera is developed by the Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics (RBVI), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS P41-GM103311).

UCSF ChimeraX (or simply ChimeraX) is the next-generation molecular visualization program from the RBVI, following UCSF Chimera. It is in early development and not yet publicly released, with release anticipated sometime in 2016.

Feature Highlight

Interactive Shadows

Interactive shadows (shadows that move as structures are moved) can be enabled in the Effects dialog or with the command set shadows. Click the image to show a small molecule rotating above a rectangular plane. This simple animation was made with the Chimera command script tumble.com. Interactive shadows also work with ribbons, surfaces, and other representations.

(More features...)

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Gallery Sample

Loop Interactions

The image shows interactions of the delta-1 loop with the rest of hepatitis C virus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (Protein Data Bank entry 1quv). Loop residues in contact with the rest of the structure (van der Waals overlap ≥ 0.01 Å) are displayed as sticks; interacting surface atoms are shown as red patches. (More samples...)