[chimerax-users] Color protein by residue

[Elaine Meng]

Hi Tom,
The schemes aren’t built in (predefined) in ChimeraX, but certainly you can color residues whatever colors you want, for example by specifying the color hex codes from the table you showed ( http://jmol.sourceforge.net/jscolors/ ):

color :ala #c8c8c8
color :arg #145aff
(etc.)

Putting the commands in a plain text file named something.cxc and then opening it in ChimeraX applies the coloring scheme. You could include the “target” option in each command if you want to limit coloring to only the atoms (or only the cartoons or  surfaces).

For your convenience, I’ve made and attached a ChimeraX command file for the “amino” scheme. I doublechecked it, but you should probably verify for yourself that I copied the color codes correctly.  I’m sure you can generalize to make a similar file for any other residue-name-based scheme that you wish.  These schemes are pretty old;  one minor modification you might want to consider is making MSE residues the same color as MET.

Of course the commands could be typed in interactively, but if this is a scheme you want to use over and over, at least for now the command file is the way to go.

Re the VR, it sounds interesting, but I will leave it to others on our team (those who would actually be working on the VR stuff) to respond.   As you may have seen, we have ChimeraX working with VR as per this description:
<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/vr.html>

I hope this helps,
Elaine
----------
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. 
UCSF Chimera(X) team
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco

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> On Aug 28, 2017, at 11:27 AM, Tom Skillman <TSkillman at benaroyaresearch.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Elaine,
>  
> I guess I was asking both questions: 1) Is it possible to color a PDB protein by residue, i.e. each of the 23 residues as a different, but consistent, color across the whole protein, and 2) Do you support any of the standard color schemes like this one that I've used in the past – 
>  
> <image002.jpg>
>  
> I'm more interested in the first issues - can I color ByResidue (with any color scheme)?   J
>  
> Thanks for your assistance.
>  
> Best,
> Tom
>  
> Thomas Skillman
> Director Research Technology
> Benaroya Research Institute for Autoimmune Disease
> Seattle, WA
>  
> PS – If you are interested, I created an VR based immersive space for collaborating on PDB models. It adds another dimension to looking at and discussing protein structure.  Let me know if you’re interested and we can set up a time to give you a demo.
>