Jmol/Visualizing membrane position

Here are two ways of visualizing the position of a lipid bilayer membrane around the integral membrane portion of a trans-membrane protein.

Outside Inside

1. represent the water-lipid boundaries. Red pseudoatoms represent the extracellular boundary, and blue pseudoatoms represent the cytoplasmic boundary.^[1]

2. A represents membrane near the protein. If desired, .

a hydrophobic vs. polar color scheme, the protein within the lipid bilayer is seen to have a largely hydrophobic surface. The example used here is 5lil.

Methods: Pseudoatoms

Any protein structure that includes an integral membrane domain can have pseudoatoms added to the PDB file by the Orientations of Proteins in Membranes Server^[1]. Structures in the Protein Data Bank are pre-processed; other structures may be uploaded to the server. The server removes hydrogen atoms from the model.

You can download the pseudoatom-enhanced PDB file from the server, and then upload it to Proteopedia for use in a Molecular Scene.

In the case of 5LiL, I had difficulty getting the pseudoatoms to show from a green link (even though they displayed in the SAT). In the PDB file, the pseudoatoms followed a MASTER record. I deleted the MASTER record and all CONECT records, and then I got the results shown above with Image:5lil opm2.pdb.

• View 5lil_opm.pdb in FirstGlance in Jmol

Methods: Translucent Cylinder

Choose boundary residues

First you must choose residues or atoms in the model that are closest to the ends of the desired cylinder. If you wish, you can use a pseudoatom-enhanced model to assist.

Viewing the model in FirstGlance in Jmol, you can use Hydrophobic/Polar (Views tab) to visualize the domain with a hydrophobic surface. Touching or clicking on atoms at the domain boundaries will identify those amino acids. If you wish, you can center a particular residue, then zoom in, and see atomic detail with Vines/Sticks (Views tab).

For 5LiL, I chose thr607.og1 and leu250.cd1. "OG1" means "oxygen, gamma one", namely a sidechain oxygen that is 2 bonds away from the alpha carbon. CD1: carbon, delta one. It would have worked equally well to use the entire residues, simply thr607 and leu250.

Generate the Cylinder

To generate the cylinder in the SAT, click on the button below JSmol Advanced: Open JSmol Console. The command to generate the cylinder will have this form:

draw cyl1 cylinder diameter 100.0 color gray (thr607) (leu250)

Adapt this command to your situation, copy and paste it into the LOWER box of the Console, and click the Run button at the lower-left of the console box.

• cyl1 is an arbitrary name for this cylinder.
• You may adjust the diameter and color to your taste. (Gray is a standard color for hydrophobic. Yellow is sometimes used with the mnemonic butter in mind.)
• If you wish to delete all cylinders before making a new one, the command is

draw * delete