NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling & Visualization University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Molecular Representations in VMD

Molecules may be drawn as lines, bonds, CPK, licorice, VDW spheres, ribbons, tubes, surface, secondary structure cartoons, points, C-alpha traces, and surfaces. Examples of each of these representations for the small protein alanin are given below.

Lines	Bonds	Cartoon	VDW
CPK	Licorice	Tube	Ribbons
Surf	Points	Trace	Solvent

For each of these representations, you may color by atom, residue, segment, molecule name, mass, charge, occupancy, position, and backbone. The pictures shown above were colored by atom name.

By using VMD's powerful atom selection language, multiple molecular representations may be applied to arbitrary groups of atoms simultaneously. Examples of simultaneous representations can be found in the Group's image gallery.

Funded by a grant from
the National Institute of
General Medical Sciences
of the National Institutes
of Health

Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology // National Institutes of Health // National Science Foundation // Physics, Computer Science, and Biophysics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign