Sandbox c10

On October 7th, 2009 the Nobel Committee announced three structural biologists would share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies of the The Ribosome. The ribosome is the machine in your cells that accurately and efficiently decodes the genetic information stored in your genome and synthesizes the corresponding polypeptide chain one amino acid at a time in the process of translation. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the M.R.C. Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University; and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel share the prize for the first atomic-resolution structures of the two subunits that come together to form an active ribosome. These structures are considered landmarks for the fact they showed clearly the major contributions to decoding and peptide bond synthesis come from RNA and not protein, as well as for the sheer size of the structures determined. These structures represent tour-de-force efforts in understanding fundamental processes in every organism on earth and will have direct impacts on how we fight pathogenic bacteria in the immediate future. Shown are both subunits of the ribosome, as well as that bind in the complex during the process of translation. Read more....

• Hemoglobin - the protein in your blood responsible for oxygen transport
• HIV-1 protease - a protein made by the HIV virus, crucial for infection
• Lac repressor - controls expression of bacterial enzymes involved in lactose metabolism

• All PDB entries (over 65,000) have pages

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• Visit the Table of Contents for a structured exploration of Proteopedia's content
• Mini-biography on Frederic M. Richards, an eminent protein structure and function researcher
• Mechanosensitive channels: opening and closing - channels involved in touch, hearing, and in maintaining osmotic balance

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Get started with our narrated video guide, then use our editing-help page as a reference.

Help expand existing pages like 1twc or Prion proteins; or start a new page on your favorite topic. We could use pages on DNA, Trypsin, & Myoglobin, among others.

• Understand and communicate protein 3D structure-function relationships
  • Example: Elongation factor SelB, the protein responsible for adding the 21^st amino acid selenocysteine to a growing protein chain in bacteria, as seen in the PDB's Molecule of the Month.

• Develop tutorials or molecular scenes to project during lectures
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• Create supplementary material for your journal publications
• Create pages about your research team or institute, highlighting structures you have researched.

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Proteopedia - a scientific 'wiki' bridging the rift between 3D structure and function of biomacromolecules, Genome Biology 2008, 9:R121 doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-8-r121