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VOID is a computer program for computing packing defects in protein molecules and for attempting to predict protein-protein associations. It implements an algorithm for computing the molecular interstitial skeleton [M. L. Connolly, "Molecular Interstitial Skeleton", Computers and Chemistry, 15, 37-45 (1991)]. A variable-radius probe sphere passes through the protein interior tracing out a network of packing defects and tunnels connecting them. This algorithm simultaneously generalizes the accessible surface and Voronoi polyhedra. The program will also produce a rendered image of the molecule and its skeleton and write it to disk. The other algorithm, which tries to dock proteins together, is described in M. L. Connolly "Shape Distributions of Protein Topography" (1992), accepted by Biopolymers. It produces a list of several hundred proposed protein complexes, about 1% of which are correct, assuming that the two proteins structures were taken from a cocrystal. It has not been tested on pairs of protein molecules whose structures have been solved independently. The program consists of about 60,000 lines of C code, most of which is actually devoted to the implementation of a sophisticated scripting language on top of which the skeleton and docking algorithms are built. There is also a section of the program devoted to interactive computer graphics that works well on an HP 9000 workstation, and shakily on an SGI IRIS. The name VOID is an acronym for Volume Overlap, Isotopy and Docking. The word "VOID" itself is also a reference to the molecular interstitial skeleton.

NOTE:This system is fairly large and consists of many subfiles. It can be distributed in either ANSI D (VAX COPY) format or in TAR format. The TAR format is available only on half-inch magnetic tapes.

Lines of Code: 60,000 C (ANSI Standard)