Subject: SUMMARY Helical Wheel/string-of-beads programs

From: [email-masked] (Howard Broughton)
Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 11:01:21 EST

My original post requesting information on programs that can draw helical wheels
and/or string-of-beads representations of proteins promised a summary, and in
addition I have had a number of e-mails requesting one.

One reply suggested RASMOL but although this produces a number of 
representations, at least the version I have seen was not able to produce 
these particular cartoons.

Walter REIHER ([email-masked]) suggested the GCG package - this can 
do helical wheels.  I have had a look at the manual and software but can't find
the string-of-beads.

Jacques-Antoine DURET ([email-masked]) has a pascal program under 
development for drawing helical wheels, and stated that anyone who wanted to 
help develop it should write to him.  His program is aimed especially at the
G-protein coupled receptors.

Wim VRANKEN ([email-masked]) had an answer from a similar query in a 
different newsgroup and suggested the program pSAAM from Tony Crofts at the
University of Illinois.  It's available on anonymous ftp from

nemo.life.uiuc.edu

The program draws (on a PC running WINDOWS) both helical wheels and string-of-
beads representations ; it appears to be sold at a "shareware" price with a
more fully-functional version available commercially at extra cost.

If you want this program, you'll also need unzip and may need to get another
program from uiuc to make pSAAM run (see the files that you extract from 
psaam.zip).

Many thanks to everyone who replied.

Tel     :       +44 1279 440 500                Howard B. Broughton
Fax     :       +44 1279 440 390                Molecular Modelling
E-mail  :       [email-masked]      Merck Sharp & Dohme
                                                Neuroscience Research Centre