Unity Protein Visualiser

My third year thesis was an individual project exploring the application of game technologies to a field of research, in my case biochemistry, and producing exploratory software showcasing a possible use.

I dedicated the initial phase of the project to researching the field to understand core concepts, how modern research tools work, and previous applications of game technologies. To focus my research, I also interviewed biochemistry researchers from the university to understand what were the most useful tools and features they used. As a result, I chose to implement a protein visualiser using the Unity game engine.

The application provides some of the core functionalities expected from standard molecular visualisers such as VMD:

• Load protein data from .pdb files (from the Protein Data Bank) and .dssp files (protein secondary structure data)
• Provide a selection of representations for viewing loaded molecules
• The ability to select specific atoms/amino acids/primary and secondary structures, and choose different representations for them

The pandemic struck in the middle of my project and impacted largely on its final outcome. The visualiser should have supported virtual reality, which I could no longer implement as I do not have a personal VR setup. This was mitigated by my use of version control software as I could set aside the VR development branch at minimal cost.

I really enjoyed working on this project, getting to learn about a completely new subject was stimulating, especially such a vast one. As a result, I gained confidence in my skills as an independent researcher, developer and project manager. I managed to produce a protein visualiser able to load protein data from standard file formats and to create custom protein visual representations for which I was awarded a mark of 76%.