Ribbons General Description

The ribbons software package by Mike Carson is designed to display molecular models as rendered images. The data necessary consist of atomic coordinates in Protein Databank format and files of color-coding information. The latest version (3.14) runs on IRIX, Dec Alphas and the Linux machines. An abbreviated version of Mike Carson's README file will give you a quick overview.

The Ribbons home page has additional information.

A worked example for making solid surface using Ribbons is shown here
A worked example for makeing ribbon figures using Ribbons is also here

The User Manual is on-line as well as available in hard copy in the core area.
A PDF format is also available for viewing

For a series of demos follow this link.

See the local instructions for obtaining POV-Ray output from RIBBONS.

To Get Started:

The interactive demonstration script is invoked by typing:
setup ribbons (or source /srv/local/setup/ribbons.set)
and
ribbons-demo

Sweep out the window opened by the interactive program.
Choose a model to view with the Model menu.
LeftMouse controls scaling,
MiddleMouse XY rotations.
RightMouse XY translations.
The workings are supposed to be intuitive. But, just in case, a hard copy of the manual is in the core laboratory and the Help button will launch the HTML copy of the manual in Netscape automatically.

Read the overview of the program and look at some sample images and the steps required to create them.
Available from the ribbons-help are:
ribbons-tutorial
ribbons-image
ribbons-gallery

A beta version for PC's has been installed on Yoko and Mason.
Click on the shortcut on your desktop to launch the program.
A brief tutorial on how to use the program is here

For a default ribbon of your single-chain protein,
create a test directory, go there and copy a protein file to filename:

prot.pdb

Type:
setup ribbons
and
ribbons -e prot.pdb

Altering *.ss file to color specific residues

Edit the *.ss file as follows:

• Add an identifying string, e.g. "critical" to the end of the second line
• Add "7" (white color) to the end of all lines except the first two

    (vi command -   :3,$ s/$/    7/ )

• Change the "7" to another number for the appropriate color as listed below: