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Featured Citations

Illuminating the molecular basis of human daylight vision. Schmidt SL, Dostal J et al. Science. 2026 Jun 25;392(6805):eadz3624.

Vaccination generates broadly cross-neutralizing antibodies to the HIV Env apex. Guenaga J, Ádori M et al. Nature. 2026 Jun 18;654(8119):777–785.

Induction of broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies by a two-step mechanism informs vaccine design. Skelly AN, Gristick HB et al. Science. 2026 Jun 18;392(6804):eaec6396.

Cryo-EM reveals a right-handed double-helix dimer architecture of PCDH15. Liang X, Pathak R et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2026 Jun 16;123(24):e2607573123.

Structure of the mouse cytoplasmic lattice. Chi P, Wang X et al. Nature. 2026 Jun 10;654(8118):523–531.

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News

June 11, 2026

The ChimeraX 1.12 production release is available! See the change log for what's new.

May 7, 2026

The ChimeraX 1.12 release candidate is available – please try it and report any issues. See the change log for what's new.

December 25, 2025

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The RBVI wishes you a safe and happy holiday season! See our 2025 card and the gallery of previous cards back to 1985.

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UCSF ChimeraX

UCSF ChimeraX (or simply ChimeraX) is the next-generation molecular visualization program from the Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics (RBVI), following UCSF Chimera. ChimeraX can be downloaded free of charge for academic, government, nonprofit, and personal use. Commercial users, please see ChimeraX commercial licensing.

ChimeraX is developed with support from National Institutes of Health R01-GM129325.

Bluesky logo ChimeraX on Bluesky: @chimerax.ucsf.edu

Feature Highlight

4hhb ambient lighting

Ambient Occlusion Molecular Surfaces

Several lighting modes are available, including ambient occlusion. The image shows hemoglobin (PDB 4hhb) with the four chains shown as surfaces of different colors and heme residues as spheres. The command lighting soft or the Graphics icon computer generated image can be used to turn on ambient shadowing from 64 directions. The command lighting gentle gives a similar result, except tuned to emphasize larger indentations.

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Example Image

neuraminidase flowers

Neuraminidase Flowers

Influenza neuraminidase is an enzyme that promotes the spread of influenza virus among host cells. It is the target of oseltamivir and related antiviral drugs. The image shows tetramers of neuraminidase (PDB 3k3a) styled as flowers. Three tetramers are in different shades of pink, with a central metal ion in white and nearby residues in yellow, and a fourth tetramer is colored green to resemble leaves. Each monomer or “petal” is a six-bladed β-propeller. For image setup other than orientation, see the command file flowers.cxc. The Chimera Image Gallery includes a similar image.

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