Open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS) has announced that its peer-reviewed online publication PLoS ONE will feature a new 3D molecular animation technology on five newly published articles. This represents the start of a new PLoS ONE collection entitled ‘Structural Biology and Human Health: Medically Relevant Proteins from the SGC’ (Structural Genomics Consortium).
The peer-reviewed articles, which include some of the research highlights from the SGC, describe new protein structures. These include a protein involved in the survival and proliferation of cancer cells, a protein associated with hereditary paraplegia, and a protein involved in degrading foreign compounds and pollutants in the body.
Readers of the articles will first need to download a free plug-in for their browser. They can then click on hyperlinked text within the article to ‘spot’ the relevant position within the molecule, and interact with it at will, by zooming, rotating and exploring as required. The functionality, whereby the text of an academic article is tightly integrated with an animated and interactive molecular structure, is projected to provide an entirely new and enhanced experience. Knowledge of the 3D shape of a protein is seen to be crucial in appreciating how it carries out its role in the body.
The SGC at the University of Oxford and its sister nodes at the University of Toronto, Canada, and the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, are dedicated to finding the structures of human proteins of medical relevance which could be targets for new drugs. The SGC has over 500 datapacks already available over the web and plans to publish a significant number of academic papers incorporating these datapacks over the next four years with PLoS ONE.
PLoS ONE has been seeking to combine the traditional values of the journal with innovative online features to create an inclusive and efficient publication channel. Last month, it bagged the Association of Learning and Professional Society Publishing (ALPSP)’s 2009 award for Publishing Innovation.
Search for more such STM products in K-Store
Discuss this NEWS
More News in this Theme
