Researchers have designed and tested a new virtual reality (VR) cloud-based system intended to allow researchers to reach out and “touch” molecules as they move, folding them, knotting them, plucking them, and changing their shape to test how the molecules interact.
Using an HTC Vive virtual-reality device, it could lead to creating new drugs and materials and improving the teaching of chemistry.
More broadly, the goal is to accelerate progress in nanoscale molecular engineering areas that include conformational mapping, drug development, synthetic biology, and catalyst design.
The multi-user system, developed by developed by a team led by University of Bristol chemists and computer scientists, uses an “interactive molecular dynamics virtual reality” (iMD VR) app that allows users to visualize and sample (with atomic-level precision) the structures and dynamics of complex molecular structures “on the fly” and to interact with other users in the same virtual environment.
Because each VR client has access to global position data of all other users, any user can see through his/her headset a co-located visual representation of all other users at the same time. So far, the system has uniquely allowed for simultaneously co-locating six users in the same room within the same simulation.
Testing on challenging molecular tasks
The team designed a series of molecular tasks for testing, using traditional mouse, keyboard, and touchscreens compared to virtual reality. The tasks included threading a small molecule through a nanotube, changing the screw-sense of a small organic helix, and tying a small string-like protein into a simple knot, and a variety of dynamic molecular problems, such as binding drugs to its target, protein folding, and chemical reactions.
The researchers found that for complex 3D tasks, VR offers a significant advantage over current methods. For example, participants were ten times more likely to succeed in difficult tasks such as molecular knot tying.