Bringing macromolecular model building to life with ISOLDE

What is it about?

Structural biology lies at the heart of our growing understanding of how the molecular machinery of life works. This in turn is key to understanding diseases and designing the next generation of treatments. Unfortunately the 3D “maps” generated from experiments are often quite fuzzy, and traditional methods often struggle to build reliable models into them. ISOLDE leverages the modern boom in high-speed consumer computing to provide a model-building experience more akin to working with a real, physical molecule magically blown up to visible size. This significantly improves both the quality of the outcome, and the speed with which it can be accomplished.

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Why is it important?

The worldwide Protein Data Bank contains well over 100,000 structures of varying quality, and is growing at an ever-accelerating pace. Not only do we need tools to improve the models added in future, but also for users of legacy models to improve them to modern standards to avoid erroneous results. ISOLDE is a major step towards this goal.

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