Department of Molecular Physiology & Biological Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.
Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
Protein Sci. 2020 Jan;29(1):120-127. doi: 10.1002/pro.3747. Epub 2019 Oct 25.
In the Special Issue on Tools for Protein Science in 2018, we presented Molstack: a concept of a cloud-based platform for sharing electron density maps and their interpretations. Molstack is a web platform that allows the interactive visualization of density maps through the simultaneous presentation of multiple datasets and models in a way that allows for easy pairwise comparison. We anticipated that the users of this conceptually simple platform would find many different uses for their projects, and we were not mistaken. We have observed researchers use Molstack to present experimental evidence for their models in the form of electron density maps, omit maps, and anomalous difference density maps. Users also employed Molstack to present alternative interpretations of densities, including rerefinements and speculative interpretations. While we anticipated these types of projects to be the main use cases, we were pleased to see Molstack used to display superpositions of different models, as a tool for story-driven presentations, and for collaboration as well. Here, we present developments in the platform that were driven by user feedback, highlight several cases that used Molstack to enhance the publication, and discuss possible directions for the platform.
在 2018 年的蛋白质科学工具特刊中，我们介绍了 Molstack：一个基于云的平台概念，用于共享电子密度图及其解释。Molstack 是一个网络平台，允许通过同时呈现多个数据集和模型来交互式地可视化密度图，从而可以轻松地进行两两比较。我们预计这个概念简单的平台的用户会发现他们的项目有很多不同的用途，我们没有错。我们观察到研究人员使用 Molstack 以电子密度图、省略图和异常差异密度图的形式呈现实验证据来证明他们的模型。用户还使用 Molstack 呈现密度的替代解释，包括重新精修和推测解释。虽然我们预计这些类型的项目将是主要的用例，但我们很高兴看到 Molstack 被用于显示不同模型的叠加、作为故事驱动演示的工具以及协作。在这里，我们介绍了由用户反馈驱动的平台开发，突出了几个使用 Molstack 来增强出版物的案例，并讨论了平台的可能方向。
