PERCEPTIONS AT THE NANOSCALE
David Glowacki. First published in Nature, May 7 2019
Artistic imagination can help drive scientific imagination.
Building on psychology and neuroscience research linking multisensory processing and attention, our laboratory actively integrates both artistic and scientific practices to develop technologies for enabling multisensory perception of nanoscale dynamics, exploring perceptual channels beyond vision — for example, audio, touch and proprioception.
Our work has highlighted a number of applications where multisensory approaches enable more intuitive (and efficient!) nanoscale design and engineering. This is a relatively unexplored territory for nanotechnology research, requiring deep and symmetric exchanges between aesthetic practice and scientific practice, but it has the potential to usher in a new paradigm for nano-engineering, improving our dynamical intuition and our ability to communicate.
iMD-VR to study COVID proteins
Interactive Molecular Dynamics in Virtual Reality Is an Effective Tool for Flexible Substrate and Inhibitor Docking to the SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease.
Our recent paper shows how our open source interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality (iMD-VR) program Narupa can be used to investigate proteins which are relevant to the ongoing COVID pandemic. In the paper, we looked at the main protease (Mpro) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is one focus of drug development efforts for COVID-19
VR for teaching biomolecular physics
Really exciting to see work by Dr. Simon Bennie featured on the cover of this month’s issue of the Journal of Chemical Education. The paper, which you can access here, outlines how Narupa, our open-source VR-enabled interactive simulation framework, was applied to develop a computational laboratory exercise enabling undergraduate students to better understand the dynamics and interactions that guide drug-protein binding.
Interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality from quantum chemistry to drug binding: An open-source multi-person framework
An open-access paper describing our open-source iMD-VR framework Narupa has been published as in J Chem Phys , and it’s been selected as the “Editor’s Pick featured article”. It’s also scheduled to appear on the journal’s cover, featuring an image made by IRL PhD student Alexander Jamieson-Binnie.
Narupa builder prototype
The IRL have just released a prototype for a molecular builder, the latest addition to the open-source Narupa family Features are being actively developed right now… if you have ideas or features you’d like to see (or bugs to report) let us know via the GitLab issue repository
iMD-VR for flexible protein-ligand docking
We’ve just published a paper describing the use of interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality (iMD-VR) for carrying out flexible protein-ligand docking, demonstrated through experiments carried out docking drug molecules into the binding pockets of trypsin, neuraminidase, and HIV-1 protease.
Narupa: open-source beta exectuble
We’ve just published an open access article (arxiv.1902.01827) describing Narupa, our open-source multi-person iMD-VR (interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality) framework. To go along with the article, we’ve published a stable beta executable of Narupa, available at irl.itch.io/narupaxr.
The executable is effectively a build of the source at gitlab.com/intangiblerealities. If you want to set up your own multi-participant VR lab, instructions are available here.