Eric Martz

Professor Emeritus

Fax: 413-545-1578
Email: emartz@microbio.umass.edu
Mailing address

Current Projects

Ph.D.: Department of Biology, Johns Hopkins University, 1969

Macromolecular Visualization and Structural Bioinformatics

Our work provides innovative, widely-used, award-winning tools for visualization of macromolecular structures in education, research, and structural bioinformatics. These are all free and open source, and include:

• FirstGlance in Jmol (firstglance.jmol.org): (firstglance.jmol.org): A simple 3D visualization tool for web browsers, designed for journals that publish new protein structures. Requires no installation. Adopted by Nature Structural and Molecular Biology among others. Free and open-source, first offered in 2005.
• Protein Explorer (www.proteinexplorer.org): A popular tool for exploring, understanding, and qualitative analysis of structures of proteins and protein-ligand or protein-drug interactions. MERLOT Classic Award for Biology in 2003: "has revolutionized the teaching of biology at a molecular level". Adopted as a visualization option by several bioinformatics resources. First offered in 1998; continued development is our primary project.
• Educational Macromolecular Visualization Tutorials & Resources include structures of DNA, hemoglobin, antibody, MHC, lipid bilayers and channels, animations of molecular vibrations in infra-red spectroscopy, the Protein Morpher, Noncovalent Bond Finder, History of Visualization of Biological Macromolecules, and help for authoring molecular visualization tutorials. Portions first offered in 1996.
• The ConSurf Server automatically identifies evolutionarily conserved surface patches on proteins. We integrated Protein Explorer into ConSurf, which was developed by Nir Ben-Tal, Fabian Glaser et al. at Tel-Aviv University, Israel. First available Fall 2002.
• Our illustrated Atlas of Macromolecules provides a handy source of examples to educators and students. First available in 2002.
• Protein Structure Training Workshops can be arranged.
• The World Index of Molecular Visualization Resources (www.molvisindex.org): a visitor-maintained database, first offered in 2000.
• The RasMol Home Page provides the largest and most complete documentation available for RasMol 2.6, a popular macromolecular visualization tool by Roger A. Sayle. Developed 1995-1999.
• PDB Lite (pdblite.org), mirrored worldwide, helps beginners find published protein structures. First available 1998.
• The Molecular Visualization Freeware EMail Discussion provides an international forum for educators and developers. Founded 1995.

Selected Publications

A more frequently updated list is within Protein Explorer.

Landau, Meytal, Itay Mayrose, Yossi Rosenberg, Fabian Glaser, Eric Martz, Tal Pupko, and Nir Ben-Tal, 2005. "ConSurf 2005: the projection of evolutionary conservation scores of residues on protein structures", Nucl. Acids Res. 33:W299-W302. (PDF).

Martz, Eric, and Timothy Driscoll, 2004. "Introduction to Macromolecular Visualization", in The Internet for Molecular Biologists: A Practical Approach, Clare Sansom and Robert Horton, eds., Oxford University Press, Chapter 9, pp. 161-189.

Martz, Eric, 2004, "Visualization, Molecular" plus twelve other entries for the Dictionary of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, John M. Hancock and Marketa J. Zvelebil, eds., Wiley-Liss Publishers.

Martz, Eric, 2003. "3D Molecular Visualization with Protein Explorer", Chapter 32, pages 565-586 in Introduction to Bioinformatics, Stephen A. Krawetz and David D. Womble, eds, Humana Press, Totowa NJ. (Includes Challenges to help you learn Protein Explorer based on myoglobin and lipase.)

Glaser, Fabian, Tal Pupko, Inbal Paz, Rachel E. Bell, Eric Martz, and Nir Ben-Tal. 2003. ConSurf: Identification of Functional Regions in Proteins by Surface-Mapping of Phylogenetic Information. Bioinformatics 19:163-4. (Abstract)

Martz, Eric. 2002. Protein Explorer: Easy Yet Powerful Macromolecular Visualization, Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 27 (February):107-109. (PDF available on request.)

1966-1997: Research and over 50 publications in cell biology and immunology.

Department of Microbiology
203 Morrill Science Center IVN
University of Massachusetts
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