[4][5][6] It was originally developed by Mark B. Gerstein, Werner Krebs, and Nat Echols in the Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry Department at Yale University.
The database includes a web-based tool (the Morph server) which allows non-experts to animate and visualize certain types of protein conformational change through the generation of short movies.
[3] The Morph Server was originally primarily a research tool rather than general molecular animation tool, and thus offered only limited user control over rendering, animation parameters, color, and point of view, and the original methods sometimes required a fair amount of CPU time to completion.
[11] Since their initial introduction in 1996, the database and associated morph server have undergone development to try to address some of these shortcomings[2][12] as well as add new features, such as Normal Mode Analysis.
[13] Other research grounds have subsequently developed alternative systems, such as MovieMaker Archived 2016-01-24 at the Wayback Machine from the University of Alberta.