Protein Portraits Honors course featured in PDB Newsletter
Our Biochemistry and Biophysics Honors Course Protein Portraits, taught by Professor Phil McFadden, was featured in the Education Corner of the PDB Newsletter.
Protein Portraits is a nontraditional college course developed around the question of what it might be like to shrink to the nanometer realm for a direct encounter with a protein molecule. Since this question invites artistic interpretation, the course is recommended to students whose tastes include both art and science.
One of the student projects, Calcitonin, was polled as "most scientific."
Protein: Calcitonin
Student artist: Nathan Forster
Base on PDB ID: 2glh
| Bones are a surprisingly dynamic part of an organism's body in that it is constantly being torn down and built back up by the combined efforts of osteoclasts and asteoblasts. Calcitonin, a molecule produced by the thyroid gland, is the protein responsible for both calcium uptake and telling the osteoblasts to build up new bone. Salmon calcitonin, depicted here with salmon vertebrae as the amino acids, is a prescribed medication for the debilitating bone loss of osteoporosis. [Thanks go to Dr. Eric Forsman for providing dermistid beetles to clean the vertebrae, and to the Umatilla and Warm Springs Indian Tribes for providing the salmon material.] |  |
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