RasMol

RasMol is a handy and reliable application destined for viewing molecules, able to work with both small and large proteins. It is a good exploration software that provides many viewing possibilities and rotation in space.

It targets students, teachers and generally, all academic personnel that is interested in inspecting the structure of molecules within a pleasant and appealing environment.

Following a short and complication-free installation process, you can make acquaintance with the user interface, which sports a user-friendly and intuitive appearance. The feature set is encased inside a few menus that are easy to explore and understand, especially by scientists.

Files can be added using the dedicated commands, as well as by drag and drop. Amongst the formats supported by the application are PDB (Protein Data Bank), MDL, MSC, Alchemy, CIS, Mopac and RasMol.

The viewing mode can be selected using the Display menu, where you’ll find an extended offer that includes wireframe, backbone, spacefill, sticks, riboons, strands, cartoons and molecular surface. Further customizations are provided in the Colours menu that will emphasize the different parts of a molecule by highlighting them individually.

From the Options section, you can enable or disable various elements that are displayed by default in the structure of the molecule. For instance, if you don’t want to see the hydrogens and hetero atoms inside the current model, you can uncheck them for a simpler view.

Generous options are also offered within the Export menu, from where you can save the current model in various formats including BMP, GIF, PS, PPM, VRML, to name a few.

Overall, RasMol makes a good impression; however, what struck us during its testing was the lack of a zoom function, which seems a bit odd for a viewer.