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Featured Citations

DNA damage drives antigen diversification in Trypanosoma brucei. Smith JE, Wang KJ et al. Nature. 2026 Jun 4;654(8117):219–228.

Ultrastructure of dopaminergic varicosities revealed by cryo-correlative light and electron microscopy. Lycas MD, Morado DR et al. J Cell Biol. 2026 Jun 1;225(6):e202503059.

Selective autophagy fine-tunes plant immunity to promote cell survival during viral infection. Clavel M, Bianchi A et al. Science. 2026 May 28;392(6801):eadu9554.

Ectopic NMDAR expression in cancer unmasks germline-encoded autoimmunity. Kleeman SO, Michalski K et al. Nature. 2026 May 28;(8116):1216–1228.

BCDX2-CX3 and DX2-CX3 complexes assemble and stabilize RAD51 filaments. Koo CW, Xiao J et al. Nature. 2026 May 21;653(8115):952–961.

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News

May 7, 2026

The ChimeraX 1.12 release candidate is available – please try it and report any issues. See the change log for what's new.

December 25, 2025

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The RBVI wishes you a safe and happy holiday season! See our 2025 card and the gallery of previous cards back to 1985.

December 16, 2025

The ChimeraX 1.11 production release is available! See the change log for what's new.

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UCSF ChimeraX

UCSF ChimeraX (or simply ChimeraX) is the next-generation molecular visualization program from the Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics (RBVI), following UCSF Chimera. ChimeraX can be downloaded free of charge for academic, government, nonprofit, and personal use. Commercial users, please see ChimeraX commercial licensing.

ChimeraX is developed with support from National Institutes of Health R01-GM129325.

Bluesky logo ChimeraX on Bluesky: @chimerax.ucsf.edu

Feature Highlight

1cap 3D-SNFG representations

3D Symbol Notation for Glycans

The snfg command shows carbohydrate residues using the 3D Symbol Nomenclature for Glycans, in which shapes indicate different sugar classes and colors indicate their stereochemistry:

Symbol Nomenclature for Graphical Representations of Glycans. Varki et al., Glycobiology. 2015 Dec;25(12):1323-4.
3D implementation of the symbol nomenclature for graphical representation of glycans. Thieker et al., Glycobiology. 2016 Aug;26(8):786-7.

Common carbohydrate residues are identified by their PDB residue names as per the wwPDB Chemical Component Dictionary. The image shows 3D-SNFG representations for BDP (β-D-glucuronic acid), BGC (β-D-glucose), GAL (β-D-galactose), and MAN (α-D-mannose) in PDB entry 1cap. See the command file snfg.cxc for image setup other than orientation (requires ChimeraX 1.12 daily build from Jan 15, 2026 or later).

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Example Image

potassium channel

Potassium Channel-Calmodulin Complex

KCNQ1 is the pore-forming subunit of a cardiac potassium channel. It binds to calmodulin, and mutations in either of these proteins can cause congenital long QT syndrome, a dangerous propensity for irregular heartbeats. In the image, a structure of the KCNQ1/calmodulin complex (PDB 5vms) has been assembled into the native tetrameric form with the sym command. The view is from the cytoplasmic side, with KCNQ1 shown as surfaces, calmodulin as cartoons, and calcium ions as balls. A pastel palette from ColorBrewer has been used to color the surfaces, darkened with color modify for the cartoons, and “rotated” 45° in hue for the ions. See the command file colormod.cxc.

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