THe pursuit of the Kunkel Lab objective "biological patterns in space and time", requires an improved method of visualization. Idealy, one would like 3-D motion graphics capabilities. One recent improvement has allowed a reasonable approach to exhibiting 3-D data sets in stereo with time progression capabilities. It is the Kinemage Project of David and Jane Richardson which focuses on 3-D protein structure, including its kinetic plotting.
The Kunkel Lab has concentrated on adapting the Kinemage approach to
non-molecular applications. This was stimulated by the publication by the
Richardsons of a '.kin' file in which the concept of a bucky-ball
is used to construct an
image of a capitol building. Other 3-D molecule plotting software such as
Chime and Rasmol are wedded to molecular dimensions and do a good job of
plotting for molecular biologists but these plotting programs can not be used
for plotting non-molecular 3-D data. Here are some links to our attempts
to help others and ourselves to plot 3-D information: