Visual haptic-based biomolecular docking

Cyberworlds could be a platform for both research and e-learning particularly in research intensive disciplines such as biology, physical chemistry, molecular medicine, biophysics, structural biology, bioinformatics, etc. The computer simulation of assembling molecules has been studied intensively in the field of computer-aided rational drug design. 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 real-time interactive visualization and manipulation of molecules in virtual environment. These techniques help the user to understand molecular interactions, and to evaluate the design of pharmaceutical drugs. 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 could enable the users to manipulate the molecules and feel its interaction during the docking process in virtual experiment on computer. In this paper, we propose visual haptic-based biomolecular docking system that could be used for biomolecular docking to study helix-helix interactions and in e-learning.