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Featured Citations

Convergent MurJ flippase inhibition by phage lysis proteins. Li YE, Antillon SF et al. Nature. 2026 Apr 30;652(8112):1274–1280.

Mechanism of co-transcriptional cap snatching by influenza polymerase. Rotsch AH, Li D et al. Nature. 2026 Apr 30;652(8112):1281–1288.

Integrase anchors viral RNA to the HIV-1 capsid interior. Singer MR, Li Z et al. Nature. 2026 Apr 23;652(8111):1068–1075.

The E3 ubiquitin ligase mechanism specifying targeted microRNA degradation. Farnung J, Slobodyanyuk E et al. Nature. 2026 Apr 16;652(8110):784–793.

Non-equilibrium snapshots of ligand efficacy at the μ-opioid receptor. Robertson MJ, Modak A et al. Nature. 2026 Apr 16;652(8110):794–802.

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News

December 25, 2025

computer generated image
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.

November 21, 2025

The ChimeraX 1.11 release candidate is available – please try it and report any issues. See the change log for what's new. This will be the last release to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and its derivatives.

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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

5v8m chain network screenshot

Interactive Chain Network

Chain-chain interfaces can be identified by buried surface areas and displayed as a network diagram with the interfaces command or the Molecule Display icon computer generated image. In the diagram, nodes (circles) represent chains, larger for greater surface areas, and edges (lines) between nodes represent chain-chain interfaces (default ≥ 300 Å2 buried area). Dotted lines represent interfaces smaller than half the size of the largest in the structure. Diagram context menus enable a variety of actions, such as “exploding” the structure by moving chains apart, hiding all but the chains in contact with a given chain, and showing a more detailed plot of the residues forming a given interface.

The structure is an HIV envelope glycoprotein trimer bound by three copies of a broadly neutralizing antibody (PDB 5v8m), with chain information shown in the Log. Glycosylations (not displayed) were included in the surface area calculations. For setup, see the command file trimer-network.cxc.

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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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