Sandbox bcce6

The Leucine Zipper is a protein structural motif consisting of two alpha helices coiled around each other. The crystal structure shown here (PDB ID:2ZTA) is a small part of a much larger protein from yeast called GCN4.

The two together make a left handed superhelix. The amino acids between the two helices are , although there is one pair of that hydrogen bond at the center. The many obviously give the name for this protein motif.

is an image of a protein that uses a leucine zipper to hold two alpha helices in the DNA major groove, but the structure only shown one of them. This scene works! It was created using only the SAT, not with the JSmol console, which got me into some trouble as you can see from the links in the previous paragraph.

Model

This paper model of the leucine zipper can be made from a PDF available from MolecularOrigami.com. The model is challenging to build (skill level 4 out of 5) because it requires careful control of the curvature of each helix. Hydrophobic side chains between the helices are represented by pieces of paper that are glued to the peptide planes. Several of these models can be attached in sequence to make a representation of the long fibrous portion of myosin.

Function

Disease

Relevance

Structural highlights

This is a sample scene created with SAT to by Group, and another to make of the protein. You can make your own scenes on SAT starting from scratch or loading and editing one of these sample scenes.