1. Artist: Jessica Brown
Name of Artwork: Collagen in the Fossil of the Last Moa
Protein: Collagen
PDBID: 1K6F
Date in History: 1445
Project Description: I chose to look at historical events of extinction and the role of collagen as a dating technique in fossils. Research by Cleland et al has shown that studying collagen in moa fossils can give us insight into how proteins break down after death and can be used as a baseline for determining the age of the protein, and therefore the approximate time of death. My painting is meant to mimic the famous Archaeopteryx fossil with a Moa skeleton, representing the extinction of the Moa in 1445 AD. Collagen is a structural protein, and has a triple helix structure which is depicted in the painting in white. Some of the triple helix collagen molecules are “breaking down” showing because they are fading into the rest of the fossil. I attempted to etch the collagen triple helix structure into the painting, using thickened paint to make the texture look like rock; however, the etched triple helix was very difficult to see in the photo of the painting, so I decided to paint over the etchings in white.
Reference: Cleland Timothy P., Schroeter Elena R. and Schweitzer Mary H. (2015) “Biologically and diagenetically derived peptide modifications in moa collagens.” Proc. R. Soc.
2. Artist: Cambria Cross
Artwork: Tennis Version of Actin & Myosin
Protein: Actin- Smooth Muscle Myosin Motor Domain Complex in the Rigor State
PDBID: 6BIH
Date in History: January 28th, 2017
As a former tennis player, myself, Serena Williams immediately came to my mind when thinking about an important date in protein history with the powerful swing of her arm that most definitely required the interaction between muscle proteins, actin and myosin. This protein complex consists of multiple subunits, where the myosin heads attach to the skeletal muscle actin.
In this case, myosin was 790 units long, and actin was 377 units long. Actin and myosin have a significant role in muscle contraction. The head domains of myosin bind to actin and utilize ATP hydrolysis to generate force in a power stroke, inducing muscular contraction and action of large muscle groups. When Serena Williams swings her arm to strike the ball, she’s using large amounts of actin and myosin that create a power stroke to generate a large amount of force to hit the ball back over the net. The specific event that I chose was Serena’s most powerful stroke at the end of her battle against her sister, Venus, in the Australian Open in 2017. With this specific hit, she secured the title as she forced Venus to deliver a lob that went out of bounds. As she flexes her arm during the stroke, actin and myosin are surely there to provide that powerful force! I attempted to show the structure of actin and myosin acting together in the form of tennis products. I used a racket to represent the myosin filament, and mini tennis balls as myosin heads. These myosin heads are suspended from wiring inserted into the racket that are moveable to the left and right, just like how myosin heads move when interacting with actin to form a power stroke. For actin, I used a combination of wires and strings from the tennis racket itself to represent the actin filaments. I used a nail gun to secure these wires in place, which can be seen as the bond troponin makes with the myosin head when interacting with the actin filaments.
3. Artist: Meagan Fabbi
Artwork: Deedee (transpeptidase)
Protein: Penicillin-binding protein 2B (DD-transpeptidase)
PDBID: RCSB ID: 2wad
Date in History: September 28, 1928
This project was inspired by thinking of a moment that I personally consider to be extremely significant and impactful in human history. On September 28, 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming noticed that a mold that had fallen on the culture had killed many of the bacteria around the mold colony. This led to the beginning of a journey that would lead to the ultimate discovery and widespread use of the antibiotic penicillin, a molecule that has saved countless lives since its discovery.
Pictured is an oversized version of the molecule penicillin binding protein 2B, attached to a bacteria! The function of the protein (from the bacteria’s point of view) is cell wall biosynthesis, namely, the transpeptidation that crosslinks the peptide side chains of peptidoglycan strands. However, the mold penicillium notatum is able to produce a molecule, penicillin, that irreversibly binds to the active site of the protein, inhibiting activity leading to the breakdown of the bacterial cell walls, allowing the mold to grow, unimpeded by the bacteria. The medium used for the project was a crocheted yarn stuffed animal. The protein is made up of simplified beta strands (pink) and a-helices (red and white).
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4. Artist: Taylor Hamby
Artwork: Corona Cow
Protein: Hemagglutinin Esterase
PDBID: 3CL4
Date in History: March 26th, 1988 was the first day of vaccination against bovine coronavirus
My family owns a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon where we run about 200 head of cattle. This ranch has been in our family for six generations. Every year after calving season we brand the new babies during the second weekend of spring break, in March. Along with branding we vaccinate the calves as well, one of which of the things we vaccinate for is bovine coronavirus (BCV). The heifers and cows that we keep back will then continue to get this vaccination every year. BCV, much like COVID-19 attracts the respiratory system of cattle, causes diarrhea and dehydration. Hemagglutinin Esterase is the small spike protein on the virus. Hemagglutinin induces neutralizing antibodies and possess an esterase receptor destroying activity that may be important for virus entry. This protein serves as a second viral attachment protein for initiating infection in conjunction with the large spike protein (S). HE and S are functionally intertwined; receptor destruction and receptor binding need to be carefully balanced for efficient attachment.
On March 26th, 1988, my grandpa vaccinated his cattle for the first time to fight against BCV. Calves ages 3-21 days old are the most susceptible to contracting the virus. Vaccinating the calves creates the antibodies to fight against HE. My project was inspired by the HE protein itself, in that it resembles the head of a cow. I made sting art using an outline of the HE protein to place the nails and then used embroidery sting to create the patten and fill in spaces. I used different colors of string to give the resemblance of a cow along with the proteins unique shape.
Reference:
Lang, Yifei et al. (2020). Coronavirus hemagglutinin-esterase and spike protein coevolve for functional balance and optimal virion avidity. PNAS. 117(41), 25759-25770. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2006299117.
5. Artist: Bradley Harrison
Artwork: Checkpoint Kinase 2: DNA’s First Responder at Chernobyl
Protein: Checkpoint kinase 2 (CHK2)
PDBID: 3I6U
Date in History: May 11, 1986 – Death of Lieutenant Volodymyr Pravyk
One of the first known deaths of a member of the Chernobyl Power Station firefighter brigade and the first man to arrive at the power plant as a responder. He was the commander of the firefighter brigade and died from acute radiation sickness at the age of twenty-three after receiving an estimated radiation dose of 750 rad.
The dramatic events that transpired in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986, in what is now Ukraine, inspired me to focus on a protein that is integral to DNA damage response mechanisms following doses of ionizing radiation. I wanted to emphasize checkpoint kinase 2 as the molecular version of the heroic fire fighters that responded to the explosions of the No. 4 reactor core following an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction. Checkpoint kinase 2 is a serine/threonine kinase that phosphorylates over 20 proteins in humans following genotoxic stress. CHK2 participates in the early stages of double-stranded DNA break repair, is involved in DNA structure modification, and it can activate proteins like p53 to initiate cell cycle arrest or apoptosis. CHK2 is a dimer consisting of a total of 838 residues
and has three distinct domains: an SQ/TQ domain, a forkhead-associated domain, and a kinase domain. Following DNA damage induced by ionizing radiation, cells activate CHK2 to signal for the initiation of repair processes and cell-cycle arrest. CHK2 in essence functions as a DNA damage first responder that sounds the alert for the activation of other proteins and damage repair pathways that are essential to attempting to contain the extent of the damage to an organism’s tissues. CHK2 would have been activated immediately for the members of the first firefighter brigade to respond at Chernobyl, and CHK2 would have played a significant role in why these firefighters were able to receive these powerful radiation doses and survive for over two weeks or longer in many cases before succumbing to acute radiation sickness.
I chose to emphasize the imagery of superheated, irradiated steel in the canvas painting of my artwork, and I used sculpted polymer clay to produce a melted effect for the beta sheets and alpha helices of the CHK2 protein. The loops connecting each of the secondary structures in the protein are made out of copper wire to attempt to convey the raw open mechanical features of the No. 4 reactor following the explosion.
6. Artist: Claire Hekkala
Artwork: Dr. Osteocalcin’s Monster
Protein: Osteocalcin (Coagulation Factor)
PDBID: 1MGX
Date in History: January 1, 1818
When Mary Shelley published her novel Frankenstein on January 1, 1818, she was inventing an entire new genre: science fiction. Her husband, Percy Shelley, would die four years later in 1822. At his funeral pyre, she would fish his heart out of the burning remnants of his body: it had calcified. She kept it in her desk for the rest of her life, wrapped in his poems. The osteocalcin-based coagulation factor protein, which coagulates blood in the heart into calcium deposits, was already present within Percy Shelley at the moment that Frankenstein was published because the tuberculosis within his lungs as he lived was what caused the gradual calcification of his heart. Therefore, this protein was present at the momentous founding of a genre in January of 1818. I chose embroidery for this project because embroidery was a much larger practice in the 1800s, and I chose a pale parchment-colored fabric to represent the poetry that Mary Shelley wrapped her husband’s heart in. 
The protein’s structure is shaped in white and pink against the red of Percy Shelley’s heart. Finally, I sewed a quote into the “paper” to also represent that the heart is wrapped in pages of poetry. The quote on the embroidery says, “Thus strangely are our souls constructed,” a phrase Mary Shelley wrote in Frankenstein. Since the heart was for a long time considered to be the seat of the soul, I felt that this was appropriate – as Mary Shelley wrote about the strange construction of souls in Frankenstein, Percy Shelley’s heart was already beginning to calcify inside him.
7. Artist: Kyra Kadhim
Artwork: Little Did They Know
Protein: Oxytocin
PDBID: 1XY2
Date in History: 41 BC
Behind the scenes of many love stories is a small protein consisting of only 10 amino acids. Faced with choosing a date in history to describe, I elected 41 BC, the date that Cleopatra sailed across the Mediterranean Sea to seduce Mark Antony, then a ruler of the Roman Empire. This particular voyage was the beginning of quite a dramatic love affair which ended in the double suicide we now read of in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In the painting, a simplified representation of oxytocin is shown traveling roughly from Alexandria, Egypt to Tarsus, Turkey. By crossing this divide, oxytocin is also performing its responsibilities as a neurotransmitter which travels from a presynaptic to a postsynaptic neuron. Splatters indicate other molecules released by the presynaptic neuron just as other ships travel the seas. As oxytocin crossed this divide in the minds of both Cleopatra and Mark, it ignited a momentous change in world events.
8. Artist: Nicole Miller
Artwork: D2 Dopamine Receptor (Bound to the Atypical Antipsychotic Drug Risperidone);
PDBID: 6CM4
Date in History: 1915
I chose to depict the D2 Dopamine Receptor), a type of G-coupled protein receptor, after reading an article about the relationship between the dopaminergic (DA) system regions and creativity, as well as divergent thinking. Researchers have found that gray matter in the DA system and individual creativity levels are positively correlated, in addition to finding that polymorphisms of the DRD2 gene, which codes for the D2 dopamine receptor, are significantly associated with divergent thinking. I have been long interested in the relationship between creativity and mental illness (and neurodivergent thinking), so I chose to pair the D2 Dopamine receptor with the expressionist art movement, as that is a time period that I also find particularly interesting.
One of the “founders” of the modernist expressionism movement was Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, so I chose the date of the creation of one of his most famous paintings to be the pinpoint for this project. 1915 is the year he painted Self-Portrait of a Soldier, which is arguably one of the most recognizable pieces from the expressionist movement. Self-Portrait of a Soldier provides a visual of Kirchner’s psychological turmoil after briefly enlisting in the military during WWI, from which he was discharged due to a mental breakdown. The painting depicts a skeletal Kirchner, with a severed hand, next to a nude model in bleak, muted colors, which when compared with his prior works (such as Self-portrait with a Model, 1907), illustrates the permanent toll the war took on Kirchner’s (already tumultuous) mental state.
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9. Artist: Kavi Vaidya
Artwork: Cellulose Synthase on the Wind
Protein: Cellulose Synthase trimer
Date in History: January 14, 2012
On January 14, 2012, 42 countries participated in the Uttrayan international kite festival hosted by the state of Gujarat in India (where my family is from) and thousands of kites took to the air. For my project I wanted to honor the protein that makes this festival possible: cellulose synthase. Kites are traditionally made of paper, which is mostly composed of cellulose. Cellulose is the most abundant biopolymer on the planet and is part of plant cell walls as well as materials like tree bark, and cellulose synthase is the protein which builds those cellulose fibers, one sugar at a time. To represent this protein I made a 3D kite inspired by the structure of cellulose synthase, a very large protein made of 3 identical polypeptide chains (hence trimer). The frame was made by Knex (kids toys are quite useful for modeling) and wrapped in tissue paper (made of cellulose), with a cotton string (also made of cellulose) dangling from it to represent the cellulose synthesized. I wanted to represent the overall shape of the protein, including the hollow parts, and to reflect the sense of scale of this protein and its important role. To do that, the kite measures about 1 foot tall (longer if including the ‘cellulose’ string dangling from it) and about 20 inches at its widest section.
10. Artist: Eli Winkelman
Artwork: AHr meets Tree
Protein: Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor
PDBID: 5NJ8
Date in History: August 10th, 1961
On August 10th, 1961 the United States conducted its first test run of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Over the next ten years, almost 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides would be sprayed over Vietnam. Agent Orange contains a small contamination of 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, the most potent dioxin to humans. Once inside of cells it activates the aryl hydrocarbon (AH) receptor. The AH receptor enters the cell nucleus and forms a dimer with AhR nuclear translator that causes changes in gene transcription. These changes can cause cancers and developmental issues such as cleft pallet, spina bifida, and neural tube defects. My choice to focus on Agent Orange came from learning that in November of 1967 the algebraic geometer Alexander Grothendieck travelled to North Vietnam and taught a month long course at the evacuated University of Hanoi. My artwork is an oil on canvas painting featuring the AH receptor strangling a dying tree.
