[Chimera-users] new feature: conversion of atomic coordinates to electron density map

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Thomas,

  There is a Chimera extension that produces an MRC density map from a 
PDB file.  It is part of the Analysis of Intermediate Resolution 
Structures (AIRS) toolkit that is distributed with the EM single article 
reconstruction package EMAN1.

    http://ncmi.bcm.tmc.edu/software/AIRS
    http://blake.bcm.tmc.edu/eman

If you install EMAN and configure Chimera to find the EMAN / Chimera 
extensions as described here

    http://ncmi.bcm.tmc.edu/software/AIRS/doc_html

then there will be  a Chimera menu entry Tools / AIRS / PDB to MRC.  It 
allows you to specify a resolution and number of angstroms  per pixel 
for the map.

  This is a good bit of work to setup and I plan on including the 
ability to make a density map from a PDB model directly in Chimera 
distributions in the future.  It will use a Gaussian for each atom.  
I'll add this to my list of requested Chimera features.

    http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/plans.html

  Thanks for the suggestion.

    Tom