[DIYbio] Immersive protein structure analysis with Microsoft's HoloLens

Hey all,

We had an awesome and unexpected evening last night exploring a pre-release version of Microsoft's HoloLens at Open Science Network here in Vancouver. I think this was the first public demo of the HoloLens in Vancouver outside of Alex Kipman's talk at the TED conference. It was totally last minute and the VR Roundtable group at UBC join us to get first hand exposure to the device. Even they haven't seen the HoloLens outside of the web. You can view some photos I took during the evening on our Facebook page.

Having access got me thinking about how the HoloLens can be used for protein structure analysis. Can you imaging walking through a field of protein structures imported from PDB and introspecting how different molecules interact in 3D? Can we build a 3D rendering of the inside of a cell, at least in part? Maybe follow a signalling event as it traverses from the cell surface to the nucleus. Imagine that!

Microsoft's HoloStudio app allows one to import standard STL 3D model files used for 3D printing. The awesome free VMD molecular modelling app allows us to import the publicly available protein structures and, critically, to export 3D structures as STL files. Some of you may have exposure to the traditional publicly available 3D protein modelling tools but it is a huge difference to be able to see a 3D hologram that you can interact with. Eventually I can envisage gestural commands that allow one to modify the amino acid sequence and see how that plays out in the 3D context. Then maybe we can sync those changes to gene synthesis companies to have the DNA for real world work. I love this blue sky stuff!

What would you do if you could build a room full of protein structures? How do you see this tech evolving?

Cheers,

Scott