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Architecture of clathrin-independent AP3:ARF1-coated carriers. Kaufman JGG, Tagiltsev G et al. Sci Adv. 2026 May 15;12(20):eaed1529.

Open and closed forms of assembled henipavirus nucleoprotein suggest structural basis of genome access. Jayachandran RB, Quignon E, Renner M. Sci Adv. 2026 May 15;12(20):eaed8300.

The molecular basis of force selectivity by PIEZO2. Mulhall EM, Yarishkin O et al. Nature. 2026 May 7;653(8113):297–305.

Human DHX29 detects nonoptimal codon usage to regulate mRNA stability. Hia F, Wu Y et al. Science. 2026 May 7;392(6798):eadw0288.

CSN5i-3 is an orthosteric molecular glue inhibitor of COP9 signalosome. Shi H, Wang X et al. Nature. 2026 Apr 30;652(8112):1375–1383.

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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.

September 22, 2025

Mac users may wish to defer upgrading to MacOS Tahoe. Currently on that OS the Chimera graphics window is shifted so that it covers the command and status lines.

March 6, 2025

Chimera production release 1.19 is now available, fixing the ability to fetch structures from the PDB (1.19 release notes).

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Please note that UCSF Chimera is legacy software that is no longer being developed or supported. Users are strongly encouraged to try UCSF ChimeraX, which is under active development.
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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

density display

Density Display

Electron density maps can be read from local files or fetched from databases. Chimera's Volume Viewer allows adjusting contour levels interactively, showing multiple isosurfaces for a given map, and restricting display to a zone around selected atoms. The figure shows PDB entry 2fma and its electron density map. Settings are similar to those described in the Density Display tutorial. See also: Chimera volume display guide

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Gallery Sample

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Thermosome

Thermosomes are hollow balls inside which proteins are folded. They are found in the cytosol of eukaryotes and in archaea. Eukaryotic thermosomes have 8 different protein subunits, while archaeal ones are composed of one, two or three different proteins. The one shown from Thermoplasma acidophilum has two distinct proteins colored blue and yellow, each present in 8 copies. The two proteins have 60% sequence identity and are very similar in structure. One monomer is shown as a ribbon. Actin and tubulin are folded by eukaryotic thermosomes.

Protein Data Bank model 1a6d.

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