[chimerax-users] Coloring sidechain atoms only

[Elaine Meng]

Hi Priyanka,
I'm guessing you mean to color only atoms and not the ribbon, in which case you would just add "target a" or "atoms" (meaning atoms only) to the coloring command, e.g. show and color atoms of residues 10-20:

show :10-20
color :10-20 red target a

See explanation of "target" option:
<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/color.html#simple>

However, if you are showing the actual backbone atoms (not ribbon) and you really only want to color the sidechains, you can also do that by specifying sidechain (e.g. "sideonly" if you don't want to include CA):

hide ribbons
color :10-20 & sideonly yellow

Terms like "sideonly" that can be used in specification are explained here:
<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/atomspec.html#builtin>

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

> On Sep 6, 2022, at 10:55 AM, Priyanka Abeyrathne via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users at cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> Could you let me know the command to color only the side chain not the backbone of amino acids in ChimeraX, please?
> Thank you.
> Kind regards,
> Priyanka