Visual haptic-based biomolecular docking and its applications in E-Learning

Abstract

Visual haptic-based biomolecular docking systems could be used for both research and e-learning in research intensive disciplines such as biology, physical chemistry, molecular medicine, biophysics, structural biology, bioinformatics, etc. The assembly of molecules in a three-dimensional space or molecular docking is used for rational drug design where a ligand docks onto a receptor. The computer-aided design systems allow a real-time interactive visualization and manipulation of molecules in virtual environment. These techniques help the user to understand molecular interactions. In recent years, besides the visualization techniques, there has been increasing interest in using haptic interfaces to facilitate the exploration and analysis of molecular docking. Haptic device enables the users to manipulate the molecules and feel its interaction during the docking process in virtual experiment on computer. In this paper, we describe a visual haptic-based biomolecular docking system that we developed for research in helix-helix docking and propose its application in e-learning. We also describe haptic-based collaborative e-learning scenarios. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.