BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH SUPPORT

This proposal represents a major new initiative by the Department of Chemistry, University of California at Berkeley, to establish a Computational Graphics Network and Visualization Facility. Its immediate and specific aims are to provide an environment where all of the departments' researchers in the Biomedically related sciences can visualize complex experimental or simulation data about molecular structure and dynamics. The faculty will be interfaced with the Campus Supercomputers and with College of Chemistry X-ray Crystallographic Laboratory. It will provide the necessary high-level state-of-the-art hardware and software, as well as training in the use of visualization techniques. In this way the facility will be efficiently used by a large number of people, and will encourage the participation of users who have no previous experience of visualization. The research descriptions of the user group make clear that the ability to visualize complex and sometimes dynamical processes has become extremely important. It will enhance our capacity to determine the structure of proteins and nucleic acids. The design of proteins with unnatural amino acids, and the design of catalytic antibodies will be aided. Studies on the dynamics of the lipid-bilayer and electron transport in biological systems will be supported by fast graphics rendering devices. However, in the long term, the Integrated Departmental Facility and Network for Visualization will have a more profound effect on the nature of research carried out in the Chemistry Department at Berkeley. Theory and experimental research groups will discuss their specific needs in visualization and analysis of molecular structure and dynamics. This will stimulate the evolution of a new generation of computational tools appropriate for research in the Biomedical Sciences.