Software Developed Here



From time to time, we have developed software to solve a specific problem. We are making some of the more fully developed programs available here in the hopes that others might find them useful. This software is provided free of charge and with absolutely no warranty. It may be distributed to others but may not be incorporated into commercial products.

MacSpec

This program allows a Macintosh computer to control a simple single-beam spectrophotometer via a serial port connection. The major use of MacSpec is for kinetic experiments in which absorbance measurements are made at timed intervals from one or more cuvettes. The computer sends commands to control the spectrophotometer and records the data it receives back.

Macintosh Serial Port Interfacing

This isn't software in the usual sense, but in the course of developing MacSpec, we spent a lot of time trying to understand the arcane subject of serial ports. A summary of what we learned about all this is available as either html or a pdf file (Adobe Acrobat).

PlotCanvas

The current version of MacSpec, described above, was written with REALbasic, an outstanding object-oriented programing tool for the Macintosh. To add the ability to plot kinetic data, we used and adapted a RealBasic "class" for graphing written by Rob Frohne of Walla Walla College. With Rob's permission, we are making our version of PlotCanvas available for other RealBasic programmers.

ChromData

This is a small Macintosh utility program for converting the binary data files generated by the Rainin Dynamax and MacIntegrator chromatography systems into text files. These products, which are no longer produced, included a hardware interface and software to control high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) instruments. Converting the binary data into text files adds great flexibility in data analysis and plotting.

dyana2xplor

This is a set of Perl scripts for converting NMR distance restraint data from the format used by DYANA (recently superseded by CYANA) to that for XPLOR (superseded by CNS). Download dyana2xplor

Simulations of unfolded proteins with DYANA

A recent paper of ours:

Computational simulation of the statistical properties of unfolded proteins.
Goldenberg, D. P. (2003) J. Mol. Biol. 326, 1615-1633. Medline

describes a method for using the program DYANA to generate ensembles of calculated conformations intended to simulate the properties of unfolded proteins, assuming a "random coil" model and an ideal solvent. This tar package includes the programs and scripts we used in conjunction with DYANA for these calculations, along with documentation and a sample calculation. Download DyanaChainStats