The Molecule Viewer has been installed and you may now see some 3D rotatable vitamins and other interesting molecules. Check out the cobalt atom at the center of vitamin B12! (Drag your mouse over the picture of the molecule to rotate it.)

The Java viewer used in these visualizations is based on the demo from Sun included with the Java Development Kit 1.1. It has some problems (that I'll fix one day): it makes all the atoms the same size; it doesn't have an appropriate color for the atoms it doesn't recognize; and it does not draw the bonds between the atoms.

But it is still fun to see how wonderfully varied the structures of biological molecules can be.

A site with more molecules is here but it requires you to install a free but fancier viewer as a browser plug-in. (The NIH has a site were you can query a whole database of structures.)

Updated 2/23/03