Web-based visualisation and analysis of 3DEM data

Recent improvements to web-based visualisation and analysis of 3DEM data from EMDB and PDB are described in an open access article published in the November issue of the Journal of Structural Biology.

The article describes a number of new tools developed by our partner PDBe that include: (1) a volume viewer for 3D visualisation of maps, tomograms and models, (2) a slice viewer for inspecting 2D slices of tomographic reconstructions, and (3) visual analysis pages to facilitate analysis and validation of maps, tomograms and models. These tools were designed to help non-experts and experts alike to get some insight into the content and assess the quality of 3DEM structures in EMDB and PDB without the need to install specialised software or to download large amounts of data from these archives. The technical challenges encountered in developing these tools, as well as the more general considerations when making archived data available to the user community through a web interface, are discussed. The new web-based tools can be accessed through our atlas pages.