The MPOSE tool displays structural alignments created by the separate program MPOSE. MPOSE, which is not included in the Chimera distribution, performs a structural superposition of multiple related proteins based on curvature of the peptide backbone and creates a consensus ("template") structure, as described in:
T.D. Wu, S.C. Schmidler, T. Hastie, and D.L. Brutlag, "Modeling and Superposition of Multiple Protein Structures Using Affine Transformations: Analysis of the Globins" Pac Symp Biocomput 3:509 (1998).
There are several ways to start MPOSE, a tool in the Homology category. Explicitly starting MPOSE opens a dialog box requesting the name of the MPOSE output file. Upon successful reading of this file, the results are displayed in the main graphics window.
The results are opened as a single model with several submodels. If the file is opened as model 0, for example, the submodels would be specified by #0.1, #0.2, etc. (see atom specification syntax). The first submodel is the MPOSE consensus structure and the others are the superimposed proteins; each is shown as an alpha-carbon trace. The Model Panel lists the proteins and their submodel numbers. Submodels can be controlled independently with the Model Panel and with various commands (using submodel specifications, as shown above).