Author: Veronique Greenwood / Source: New York Times
There was a time when biochemists had a lot in common with sculptors. Scientists who had devoted their lives to studying a molecule would building a model, using metal and a forest of rods to hold up the structure of thousands of atoms. John Kendrew, who won the Nobel Prize in 1962 and was known for his model of myoglobin, said, “Slow work, but at the end you really know the molecule.”
These days simulations on screens have replaced Kendrew-style models, sacrificing some of their tactile value while gaining the ability to show movement. But what if you could enter a virtual reality environment where the molecules lie before you, obeying all the laws of molecular physics as calculated by supercomputers, and move them around in three dimensions?
In a new paper in the journal Science Advances, researchers report that they have constructed just such an environment, and that users who manipulate the proteins in VR can perform simple tasks nearly ten times faster in virtual reality than on a screen.
Intuition about how molecules behave physically remains a very important skill in chemistry and biology and their practical applications. Where a molecule might bend, where it won’t and just how the positive and negative charges it is riddled with attract and repel each other, are all key to understanding how a drug will slip into a cleft in a protein, among other puzzles.
In the virtual world, users are experiencing the cutting of…
The post It’s Time for a Chemistry Lesson. Put on Your Virtual Reality Goggles. appeared first on FeedBox.