MolViewStories: Interactive molecular storytelling

Authors: Terézia Slanináková, Zachary Charlop-Powers, Viktoriia Doshchenko, Alexander S. Rose, Adam Midlik, Anna Sekuła, Neli Fonseca, Kyle L. Morris, Stephen K. Burley, Sameer Velankar, Jennifer Fleming, Brinda Vallat, Ludovic Autin, David Sehnal

Effectively communicating knowledge related to molecular structures and their associated data remains a challenge, as traditional static figures limit interactivity and professional visualization tools often require substantial expertise. MolViewStories addresses these limitations by providing an open-source, web-based platform for creating and sharing interactive, narrative-driven molecular visualizations. The platform uses the MolViewSpec standard for reproducible scene specification, extended to support animations, interactive descriptions, and synchronized audio commentary. Visualization is powered by the Mol* Viewer, which leverages Web Graphics Library (WebGL) for efficient 3D rendering and WebXR for immersive virtual and augmented reality experiences. Users can construct molecular narratives through an intuitive graphical interface or a command-line workflow, enabling both exploratory and automated use. Completed stories can be shared online, exported locally, or distributed as self-contained packages that remain functional indefinitely. Each story is assigned a persistent uniform resource locator (URL) and can be modified or reused as a template, promoting collaboration and community-driven content creation. We demonstrate the capabilities of MolViewStories through a diverse set of narratives illustrating its broad applicability to research communication, education, and public outreach. Together, these examples highlight how interactive, web-based storytelling can make molecular data more accessible, reproducible, and engaging. MolViewStories is freely available at https://molstar.org/mol-view-stories with open-source code accessible at https://github.com/molstar/mol-view-stories.

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