UCSF Chimera is a program for the interactive visualization and analysis of molecular structures and related data, including density maps, trajectories, and sequence alignments. It is available free of charge for noncommercial use. Commercial users, please see Chimera commercial licensing.

We encourage Chimera users to try ChimeraX for much better performance with large structures, as well as other major advantages and completely new features in addition to nearly all the capabilities of Chimera (details...).

Chimera is no longer under active development. Chimera development was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (P41-GM103311) that ended in 2018.

Feature Highlight

Pipes and Planks

The PipesAndPlanks tool shows protein helices as “pipes” (cylinders) and strands as “planks” (rectangular boxes), with connectors for the intervening coil. Adjustable settings include pipe radius, plank width, colors, and whether to include arrowheads to show chain N→C directionality (see image how-to).

(More features...)

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Gallery Sample

Neuraminidase Flowers

The image shows tetramers of influenza neuraminidase (Protein Data Bank entry 3k3a) styled as flowers. Three tetramers are colored 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. (More samples...)