[MMTK] is MMTK a superset of MDTools?

[Eugene Leitl]

I wonder whether MMTK can do everything MDTools

	http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~jim/mdtools/ 

does, or whether some functionality is missing.

Classes for the analysis and modification of protein structure and
dynamics data. 

Introduction

What is Python?

For our purposes, Python is an extensible object-oriented scripting
language with high-level data structures and a large selection of
built-in libraries. For a more complete answer, consult the Python
Language Home Page. 

What is MDTools for Python?

MDTools is a Python module which provides a set of classes useful
for the analysis and modification of protein structures. Current
capabilities include reading psf files, reading and writing (X-PLOR
style) pdb and dcd files, calculating phi-psi angles and other
properties for arbitrary selections of residues, and parsing output
from NAMD into an easy-to-manipulate data object. MDTools also
features online help. 

Why MDTools?

I wanted a modern interactive/scripting language which could be
used to perform some of the simple calcuations and manipulations
often necessary when setting up and analyzing molecular dynamics
simulations. The closest example was the X-PLOR scripting
language, which is a decade old. Although C++ libraries existed,
writing compiled code for simple manipulations would be inefficient.
Additional inspiration came from Andrew Dalke's pdblang written
in Perl. 

Why Python?

I chose Python because it is a legible, cross-platform, interactive
programming language. Unlike TCL, Python has high-level data
structures and libraries which would allow everything to be done in
Python. Python's object-oriented features also allow a simple and
elegant class hierarchy to be used. 

Documentation

Getting Started

To load the MDTool module, use the command import md. 

Python 1.3 (Wed Oct 25 1995)  [GCC NeXT DevKit-based CPP 3.1]
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import md
MDTools 0.62 Exp (1996/05/17) by James Phillips.  md.help() for more info.

Help System

As noted in the above startup message, online help is available for all
classes and many functions. The main module and classes are
documented using Python's __doc__ string system. The
help([name]) function provides an extended interface to this
system, including help strings for several functions and concepts.
The help() function also works on objects by determining the class
of an object and returning the help for that class. Therefore, if you
have a molecule mol, help(mol) will return the documentation for
the Molecule class. 

In order to avoid data duplication data and methods from a
superclass are not included in the documentation for a subclass.
However, the help() function preceeds the documentation for a
subclass with the documentation for its superclass. Therefore,
md.help('Atom') returns information about the data members x, y,
and z even though these are defined in HomoCoord (see below). 

Class Structure

Inheritance is essential to the design of MDTools. The volume of
source code is rather evenly distributed among the different levels of
the class hierarcy, with the root classes being the most complex in
most cases. An understanding of the class structure will aid your use
of MDTools because of the common methods many classes inherit. 

     HomoCoord - homogeneous coordinate (x,y,z,W) 
         Vector - magnitude and direction in space (W is 0) 
         Coord - position in space (W is 1) 
              Atom - atomic properties plus links to residue,
              segment, and molecule 
     AtomGroup - collection of atoms, uses frames, calculates
     physical averages 
         ASel - generated from an AtomGroup by a selection
         function 
         Residue - residue properties plus links to segment and
         molecule 
         ResidueGroup - collection of residues 
              RSel - generated from a ResidueGroup by a
              selection function 
              Segment - segment properties plus link to molecule 
              SegmentGroup - collection of segments 
                  Molecule - pdb and psf file handling ability 
     Trans - (homogeneous) coordinate transformation 
     DCD - dcd file reading ability 
         DCDWrite - writing ability (deals with fixed atoms) 
     Data - fancy data structure for columns of numbers, does
     simple calculations, generates plots 
         NAMDOutput - reads NAMD output, converts timestep to
         time 

Demo

An introductory demo of the structure and power of MDTools is
here. 

Methods and Functions

A brief outline of the MDTools methods and functions is here. For
more current and complete information, consult the online help. 

Distribution

Since the MDTools module is in an early beta stage, it is not directly
available to persons outside of the Theoretical Biophysics Group.
For more information and special consideration, please send me
email. The first public release will take place before the end of June. 

MDTools for Python is written by James Christopher Phillips of the
Theoretical Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois. The
group is a National Institutes of Health Resource for Concurrent
Biological Computing and is a member of the National Science
Foundation Grand Challenge Application Group in Structural
Biology. J.C.P. is supported by the United States Department of
Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Program.
MDTools for Python and related documentation Copyright (c)
1995-96 by University of Illinois Board of Trustees and others.
Distribution is encouraged as long as proper credit is given. 







Materials on this site are copyrighted. Modified March 1996. 
jim@ks.uiuc.edu