Xplor-NIH is a highly sophisticated and flexible biomolecular structure determination program which includes an interface to the legacy
X-PLOR
X-PLOR is a computer software package for computational structural biology originally developed by Axel T. Brunger at Yale University. It was first published in 1987 as an offshoot of CHARMM - a similar program that ran on supercomputers made by C ...
program. The main developers are
Charles Schwieters
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was ...
and
Marius Clore
G. Marius Clore MAE, FRSC, FRS is a British-born, Anglo-American molecular biophysicist and structural biologist. He was born in London, U.K. and is a dual US/U.K. Citizen. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the ...
of the
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U ...
. Xplor-NIH is based on a
C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significa ...
framework with an extensive
Python interface enabling very powerful and easy scripting of complex structure determination and refinement protocols. Restraints derived from all current solution and many solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are perturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...
)
and X-ray scattering experiments can be accommodated during structure calculations. Extensive facilities are also available for many types of ensemble calculations where the experimental data cannot be accounted for by a unique structure.
Many of the structure calculation protocols involve the use of simulated annealing designed to overcome local minima on the path of the global minimum region of the target function. These calculations can be carried out using any combination of Cartesian, torsion angle and rigid body dynamics and minimization. Currently Xplor-NIH is the most versatile, comprehensive and widely used structure determination/refinement package in NMR structure determination.
References
External links
The home page for the software package.
Science software
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