BioBrowser - visualization of and access to macro-molecular structures

Based on the results of an interdisciplinary research project the paper addresses the embedding of knowledge about the function of different parts/structures of a macro molecule (protein, DNA, RNA) directly into the 3D model of this molecule. Thereby the 3D visualization becomes an important user interface component when accessing domain-specific knowledge - similar to a web browser enabling its users to access various kinds of information. In the prototype implementation - named Biobrowser - various information related to bio-research is managed by a database using a fine-grain access control. This also supports restricting the access to parts of the material based on the user privileges. The database is supplied by a SOAP web service so that is it possible (after identifying yourself by a login procedure of course) to query, to change, or to add some information remotely by using the 3D model of the molecule. All these actions are performed on sub structures of the molecules. These can be selected either by an easy query language or by just picking them in the 3D model with the mouse