Source-available open-source code with commercial builds maintained by Schrödinger, Inc.
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Created by Warren Lyford DeLano (DeLano Scientific LLC); maintained by Schrödinger, Inc.
Core Principles & Analysis
Created by structural biologist Warren Lyford DeLano to provide universally accessible macromolecular visualization and now maintained by Schrödinger, Inc., PyMOL takes its name from being built around an embedded Python interpreter.
PyMOL renders atomic coordinates from PDB and mmCIF files as ribbons, molecular surfaces, electrostatic Poisson–Boltzmann potentials (via APBS), and ray-traced figures showing drug–receptor hydrogen bonds and binding pockets.
Its built-in mutagenesis wizard, sequence alignment tools, and community plugin ecosystem allow medicinal chemists to inspect ligand docking poses, measure interatomic distances, and model point mutations interactively.