Molecules
Molecules is an application for the iPhone and iPod touch that allows you to view three-dimensional renderings of molecules and manipulate them using your fingers. You can rotate the molecules by moving your finger across the display, zoom in or out by using two-finger pinch gestures, or pan the molecule by moving two fingers across the screen at once. The combination of the iPhone / iPod touch's unique multitouch input system and the built-in OpenGL ES 3D graphics capabilities enable you to feel like you are manipulating the molecules themselves with your fingers.
New molecules can be downloaded from the RCSB Protein Data Bank (http://www.rcsb.org/pdb), an international repository of biological molecules and their 3-D structures. Molecules can be downloaded directly to your handheld device and stored there for later viewing. In addition, you can view detailed information about the molecule, such as the researchers who established its structure, its amino acid or nucleotide sequence, and its full name. Multiple visualization modes can be switched to by double-tapping on the 3-D rendering.
Custom molecule structures can also be downloaded to the device from any publicly available web server. The location of these structures can either be manually specified in the application, or custom URLs, such as molecules://www.sunsetlakesoftware.com/sites/default/files/neonPump.pdb.gz , can be clicked on within Safari or Mail on the device. This will launch Molecules and have it start downloading the file at that address.
Molecules is free and its source code is available under the BSD license. I feel that this can be a useful scientific and educational tool, and welcome any feedback you can provide to make it an even better program. Please stop by the forums to ask questions, make comments, or even contribute code.
Future plans include:
- 3-D rendering quality improvements
- Ribbon structure visualization
- Other data sources than the PDB for molecules, including repositories of small molecules and inorganic crystals
- A companion visualizer for the Mac desktop, that can also sync files with the portable client
