MotifSpace Client
About MotifSpace Client:
The MotifSpace Client is an application that performs protein and motif visualization
with the help of our MotifSpace database.
This client provides tools for sophisticated graphical manipulation of proteins
and motifs, such as displaying different structures within a protein, visualizing
motif in context of a protein, showing alignment of several proteins according to
the motif they share, etc.
In addition, this client provides graphical interface that shows the occurence relations
of the approximately 6,000 proteins and 1.5 million motifs we stored in our database.
The client is implemented as a smart client. It fetches data directly from the database
for visualizations and caches data locally to improve performance.
Tools are also provided for database queries. Histograms are available for several
common queries.
The key visualization component of the client is RasCtrl, an open source ActiveX
control based on RasMol.
The other part of this client is written in Visual C#, a .NET component. Data transfer
between the client and server is implemented with ADO.NET objects. As a result,
this client can only run on Microsoft Windows.
Download and Install:
System Requirement
- Microsoft Windows
- .NET Framework 2.0
- Windows Installer 3.1
- 512MB of RAM recommended
If you do not have .NET Framework 2.0 or later version installed on your computer, please download and install it first.
MotifSpace Client will not run without this prerequisite.
Please download the MotifSpace Client by clicking on the following link.
To install, please download the client and follow the guide from installation wizard.
Note that you must have the permission for registry modification since the installer
needs to register ActiveX control on your machine.
User Instructions:
Simple protein view, motif visualization, and protein alignment according to their
common motif.
A motif appears to be several balls since we only show the alpha carbons of the
amino acids that constitute the motif.
The matrix view shows the occurence relations between proteins (listed in the bottom
row) and motifs (listed in the right column). A white block shows that the motif
on the right appears in the protein.
To get the alignment view of several proteins, just simply select a motif, hold
CTRL key and click on the proteins that you are interested in. A row of windows
will show up on the top and the alignment view will be shown on the left in that
row. You can select only one motif and up to five proteins at a time.
To rotate a protein, press down left key on your mouse and drag around. To shift
a protein, press down right key and drag. To zoom in and out in a protein view,
press down both mouse keys and drag.
All the proteins in RasCtrl windows shown will be synchronized when any one of them
is rotated. To disable this function for a particular window, just uncheck the checkbox
on top of that window.
The available histograms are: Percentage of occurence amino acid in the entire database,
Amino acid count in a specific protein, Secondary structure occurence frequency
and Amino acid distance calculation.
Other Programs
RasCtrl ActiveX Object
The RasCtrl ActiveX can be downloaded alone to be embeded in other protein visualization applications.
Color Map Widget
You can visualize multiple motifs in one protein with this application.