Protein Data Bank ID: 3IRO
Protein Name: Insulin
Organism: Homo sapiens
Title of Drawing: “The Fly”
 |
 |
Insulin is a famous hormone involved in the regulation of our metabolism. In its active form, as a monomer, it can reduce the level of glucose in blood by transporting the sugar into the cell. While inactive insulin is stored as a hexamer complexed with a zinc ion.
The drawing of the fly is produced from an insulin dimer.
(function (d, w, c) {
(w[c] = w[c] || []).push(function() {
try {
w.yaCounter24672755 = new Ya.Metrika({id:24672755,
clickmap:true,
trackLinks:true,
accurateTrackBounce:true});
} catch(e) { }
});
var n = d.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],
s = d.createElement("script"),
f = function () { n.parentNode.insertBefore(s, n); };
s.type = "text/javascript";
s.async = true;
s.src = (d.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https:" : "http:") + "//mc.yandex.ru/metrika/watch.js";
if (w.opera == "[object Opera]") {
d.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", f, false);
} else { f(); }
})(document, window, "yandex_metrika_callbacks");
Protein Art 
hah! cool concept and subsequent blog. so awesome in a deliciously nerdy way!
Thanks!:) I really like the expression “deliciously nerdy”;))
Can your machine support a rendering of a specific dsDNA sequence bound to helicase, clamped, and also bound to a topoisomerase?
The protein-viewer I use can open every protein whose 3D structure is known and available in the pdb format (they are stored in the pdb data base: http://www.rcsb.org. I know that such 3D representations are available for all three proteins you listed. I can try to produce a drawing of one of them or maybe of a domain/subunit (as these proteins are rather big). However, there is a difficulty in this story: the type of representation I use in the protein-viewer traces the secondary structure of proteins, it can also represent DNA, but you won’t see any difference between different DNA-sequences (so the DNA will always look the same).
But I will definitely try it, thank you for the ideas!
Three years later… but voila, here (https://maykayart.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/dna-clamp/) is the DNA clamp!:)
May Kay,
Such a unique, captivating concept for a blog and for art! Being a former art student, it’s so amazing to see some of my favorite subjects, seemingly unrelated, combined together to make a beautiful outcome.
You’ve a new follower. I look forward to your future posts! How did this all begin?
Thank you, it’s so great to hear compliments from a real artist!
Actually my hobby started after I had to congratulate my former professor on his anniversary. I didn’t know what to do and desperately tried to find inspiration from his papers. Than I realized that the protein structures he was working on looked like funny creatures. That was when I produced my first drawings.
Later my grand aunt showed me her drawings based on mathematical functions and I saw that combination of art and science can lead to beautiful results. That was why I decided to keep on working on the idea of producing art out of proteins.