Database of Molecular Motions

The Database of Macromolecular Motions is a bioinformatics computer database on the Internet. It attempts to divide motions of protein and some RNA biological molecules into different types.^[1][2]

Description

It was originally made by Mark B. Gerstein, Werner G. Krebs and Nat Echols in the molecular biophysics and biochemistry group at Yale University. People can use an Internet page to search this computer database for a particular motion by either the protein name or Protein Data Bank number. However, many people find this computer database by just coming over from the Internet page for the protein entry at the Protein Data Bank. For proteins found in both computer databases, this different computer database often gives a link back to the Internet page for the protein on this Internet site.

The computer database includes an Internet tool or free Software as a service (the "Morph server") which lets non-experts see certain protein motions through the generation of short motion pictures. The motion pictures are made automatically by computer software on the Internet site. When done the Internet site sends an email with the motion picture information back to the user.^[3]

The "Morph Server" tool was originally a research tool rather than a tool for making motion pictures, and thus offered only limited user control over rendering, color, and point of view, and the original method sometimes required a fair amount of computer time to complete.^[4] Since the site's initial introduction in 1996, the Internet site has been made better to try to fix some of these issues^[5] as well as add new things.^[6] Other people have now made alternative systems, such as MovieMaker Archived 2016-01-24 at the Wayback Machine from the University of Alberta.^[4]