Kolatkar Anand, Kennedy Kevin, Halabuk Dan, Kunken Josh, Marrinucci Dena, Bethel Kelly, Guzman Rodney, Huckaby Tim, Kuhn Peter
Department of Cell Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA.
PLoS One. 2008 Feb 20;3(2):e1621. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001621.
The need for effective collaboration tools is growing as multidisciplinary proteome-wide projects and distributed research teams become more common. The resulting data is often quite disparate, stored in separate locations, and not contextually related. Collaborative Molecular Modeling Environment (C-ME) is an interactive community-based collaboration system that allows researchers to organize information, visualize data on a two-dimensional (2-D) or three-dimensional (3-D) basis, and share and manage that information with collaborators in real time. C-ME stores the information in industry-standard databases that are immediately accessible by appropriate permission within the computer network directory service or anonymously across the internet through the C-ME application or through a web browser. The system addresses two important aspects of collaboration: context and information management. C-ME allows a researcher to use a 3-D atomic structure model or a 2-D image as a contextual basis on which to attach and share annotations to specific atoms or molecules or to specific regions of a 2-D image. These annotations provide additional information about the atomic structure or image data that can then be evaluated, amended or added to by other project members.
