Alop3x

House arrest? What a bizarre way of looking at it. Today I went and got my car fixed at the mechanic during the same period of time I would have had to vacantly stare at my monitor and pretend to be productive at a typical cubicle job. I have more freedom of movement now than I ever did with the strict 9-5 schedule at an office.

If you want something that leaves a little less to the imagination, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staphylococcus_aureus_alpha_to... . It looks just like what it does: drill a giant hole in cell membranes.

Some proteins have 3D structures that look like abstract art only because we don't have an intuitive understanding of what shape and amino acids are necessary to convert chemical A to chemical B, which is the main purpose of many enzymes in the body. If you look at structural proteins or motor proteins, on the other hand, their function is clear from their shape.

There are a lot of other things you can do with the shape. If it has a pore, you can estimate the size and type of small molecule that could travel through it. You can estimate whether a binding site is accessible to the environment around it. You can determine if it forms a multimer or exists as a single unit. You can see if protein A and protein B have drastically different shapes given similar sequences, which might have implications for its druggability or understanding its function.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesin , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynein , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myosin

They are called motor proteins because they convert chemical energy into kinetic energy. In the case of kinesin, it forms a dimer (two copies of itself bind together to form the two "legs") and also binds to light chains (accessory proteins that modulate its behavior) so that it can walk along filaments and drag cargo around your cells. They are both proteins and more complex structures because multiple proteins are interacting, as well as binding small molecules and catalyzing them into chemical products, all to produce the motion.

This was my reaction, too. Anecdotally, I used to bike in a hot and humid environment. My first century ride (100+ miles in one sitting) was on a day that hit above 100 degrees with at least 80% humidity. I was able to train like that, 3-6 hours in the sun, more or less every day of the summer in similar conditions.