Development of a virtual reality platform for effective communication of structural data in drug discovery
Laura J. Kingsley, Vincent Brunet, G. Lelais, Steve McCloskey, Kelly Milliken, Edgardo Leija, Stephen Rush Fuhs, Kai Wang, Edward Zhou, Glen Spraggon · Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling · 2019
In drug discovery, structural knowledge of a target enables structure-based design approaches and thereby reduces the time and labor required to develop a therapy. Whilst molecular graphics frameworks coupled with computational analysis are now ubiquitous tools for the structural and computational biologist, sharing the detailed visualization and derived structural information with non-expert users still presents a challenge. Here we describe an intuitive virtual world for viewing, manipulating, and modifying chemical and macromolecular structures in a fully immersive and collaborative 3D environment. By reducing the barriers to viewing and interacting with structural data, structural analysis can be democratized to a general scientist, which in turn fosters novel collaboration, ideas, and findings in structural biology and structure-based drug discovery.