Protein diagrams

 I am an aficionado of proteins.  An undergraduate course in Biochemistry opened my eyes to the simplicity and wonder of the grand "central dogma" of biology.  It occurred to me at the time that macromolecules might be interesting to micronesian students.  

 

It reminds me now, however, of a story about Sargent Schriver, who, during Peace Corps training would run students through a long exercise about a fictious contruct.  It was non-sensical, however, and he pointed to this at the end of the lesson.  Still, it is fairly easy to understand that macro molecules are chain polymers.  And, wonder of wonders!, three of the important categories of macromolecules are chain polymers.  Proteins and Nucleic Acids are never branched.  Their entire existence and function is based upon a motif: a linear sequence.  

 I developed related curriculum.  I know that some of my students understood.  Proteins are everything.  Life is, at some level, a system of proteins interacting in various ways, among themselves, with Nucleic Acids (and coded by them as we know), fueled by carbohydrates.  Of course it's more complicated that this, but this is the core principle of life as a process.

 I am skipping much of what can be written about proteins.  Today I want to look at Protein Structure Diagrams.  Proteins, after all, attain every aspect of their functions from their shapes.  Their shapes are written in a linear code.  Imagine a giant spaghetti monster made up of one long strand of spaghetti organized in a certain configuration.

 Visiting Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, I noticed a poster, touting the over 8,000 proteins that had been characterized at that facility.  

 

 

 

 

Close up showing protein structure diagrams.

Full disclosure: I never understood these diagrams.  But today, I decided to dive into those dark waters.  Here I discovered something wonderful: A Wikipedia guide to proteins structure diagrams!  Put a pin in that.  I also stumbled upon an article about the LBNL Advanced Light Source, written in April 2025:

 Today, the nine structural biology beamlines at the ALS passed a major milestone of collectively depositing over 10,000 protein structures into the Protein Data Bank (PDB), a worldwide, open-access repository of protein structures. 

 

WOW!

Here, then, is The Wikipedia Page About Ribbon Diagrams. 

 

Here is one of the early ribbon diagrams, hand drawn by Jane Richardson.  

triose P isomerase monomer

 

 

 

 Another one:  A Prealbumin Dimer: