High-Quality Macromolecular Graphics on Mobile Devices: A Quick Starters Guide

With the rise of tablets, truly portable molecular graphics are now available for wide use by scientists to share structural information in real time at a reasonable cost. We have surveyed the existing software available on Apple iPads and on Android tablets in order to make a recommendation to potential users, primarily based on the product features. Among 12 apps, iMolview (available on both platforms) stands out to be our choice, with PyMOL app (iOS) a close alternative and RCSB PDB Mobile viewer /NDKmol (both platforms) offering some uniquely useful functions. Finally, we include a tutorial on how to get started using iMolview to do some simple visualization in 10 min.