On Wednesday, let’s talk about the four-tiered hierarchy of protein structure: Primary structure, secondary structure, tertiary structure and quaternary structure (John Wampler from U. Georgia serves a nice tutorial on the hierarchy).
Let’s also go over the two main functional classes of proteins: Soluble proteins and membrane proteins. I mentioned rhodopsin on Monday. Rhodopsin is the classic membrane protein (see wikipedia). Now, which protein do you think is the classic soluble protein? Take a deep breath and think about it…
For weekend homework, let’s agree to each study up on two of the protein portraits that have been put on magnificent display by David Goodsell at his Molecule of the Month site (a public/educational resource graciously provided by the Protein Data Bank). It’s OK if some of us choose the same portraits, but let’s try to cover a wide cross-section of Goodsell’s work.
Finally, we’ll divvy ourselves up across our four committees. So please come to class with an idea of which committee(s) you’ll join (Computer. Protein. Art. Outreach). You won’t miss out on any part of the course if you are not on one of those committees. All a committee member does is handle some of the detail work related to those four areas. Not a big deal. And it won’t surprise anyone if we switch some assignments around later, so please be willing to settle tomorrow for your second or third choice.
