High school teachers' resources

Physical model designed by a SMART Team.

Below are listed resources for high school (secondary school) teachers that concern 3D macromolecular structure, both within Proteopedia and outside it. High school teachers typically teach students of ages about 14-18. Some of the resources listed here are also appropriate for younger students (K-12), or older students including adults.

HighSchool.MolviZ.Org brings you here!

Macromolecules for High School CurriculaMacromolecules for High School Curricula

These molecules fit nicely into most secondary school biology curricula.

Molecule	At BioMolecular Explorer 3D	At Molecule of the Month	At Proteopedia	See Also
Antibody	Antibody: Immune System	Antibodies
Collagen	Collagen: Connective Tissue	Collagen		Collagen Structure Assembly Movies
DNA	DNA: Genetic Inheritance	DNA	DNA	Exploring DNA DNA Resources
Hemoglobin	Hemoglobin: Respiration	Hemoglobin	Hemoglobin
HIV Protease	HIV Protease: Infectious Diseases - AIDS Virus	HIV-1 Protease	HIV-1 Protease
Lactase	Lactase: Digestion	(cf. Pepsin, Trypsin)
Lipid Bilayers	Lipid Bilayers and Channels: Cell Structure		Gramicidin Channel in Lipid Bilayer
Myosin	Myosin: A Molecular Motor	Myosin
Nucleosomes	Nucleosomes: Chromosome Structure	Nucleosome	Nucleosome

Within ProteopediaWithin Proteopedia

A SMART Team in action.

• About Macromolecular Structure lists articles that explain and define many macromolecular structure concepts, including biological units, hydrogen bonds, ligands, peptide, Protein Data Bank and PDB identification codes, and resolution.
• Importance of 3D macromolecular structure:
  • Highest impact structures of all time.
  • Structures saving the most lives.
• Molecular Workbench, ready-to-use discovery-based learning activities, at the high school level, with built-in assessment.

Protein folding simulations in Molecular Workbench. Click image for details.

• SMART Teams consist of high school teachers and their students, collaborating with scientists to use rapid-prototyping technology to make 3D physical models of macromolecules. Recently, they are also making articles in Proteopedia, for example:
  • Group:SMART:A Physical Model of the β2-Adrenergic Receptor, from the Madison West High School 2008 SMART Team.
• Teaching Scenes, Tutorials, and Educators' Pages, including
  • Lac repressor with morphs of DNA being bent.
  • Avian Influenza Neuraminidase, Tamiflu and Relenza
• Teaching Strategies Using Proteopedia
• Quizzes within Proteopedia

Outside ProteopediaOutside Proteopedia

• Biomodel, 3D molecular visualization resources on many topics, also en español and other languages.
• BioMolecular Explorer 3D (bme3d.molviz.org). In addition to the molecules listed above, BME3D includes sections on carbohydrates, protein, lipids, vitamins, and water.

Earring representing the DNA double helix. Instructions available from Genetic Jewels.

Carbon buckyball made with balloons. More at BalloonMolecules.com.

K-12 Resources at molvisindex.org, the World Index of Molecular Visualization Resources. Includes how to make DNA earrings, and balloon molecules. Alphabet Traits Fingerprinting is a simple, quick project that makes an analogy to DNA fingerprinting using traits of each student. Suitable for students age 12 and older. Molecule of the Month. Illustrated introductory articles on over one hundred macromolecules. Interactive 3D visualization is available in the most recent articles. MolviZ.Org includes the Top Five Molecular Visualization Resources, an illustrated Atlas of Macromolecules, a tutorial on collagen, a tool for exploring any macromolecule (FirstGlance in Jmol), tools for visualizing evolutionarily conserved patches on the surfaces of protein molecules, Toobers, physical molecular models, and more. Foldit is a free computer game that allows users to fold proteins as if they were puzzles. At the same time users are having fun solving puzzles with an interesting interface, they are learning the concepts of protein structure and folding. Additionally, real science benefits as the project is meant to yield benefits to structure prediction and structure design. Furthermore, there is real science under the hood as this interactive game is based on Rosetta algorithms and software that is part of a real cutting-edge molecular modeling software package that scientist use to understand protein structures protein design and perform protein docking important to drug design. The game is a result of a collaboration between University of Washington Departments of Computer Science & Engineering and Biochemistry. Check out an article on it in Nature and this coverage of the project. Folding@home is a distributed computing project running on user's computers when they aren't using them in order give more computing power to very complex experiments in protein folding. Folding@home is run the Pande Group at Stanford University's - Chemistry Department. Rosetta@home is a program that crunches numbers when a user's computer is not otherwise being used as a screen saver-of-sorts. This projects lets users participate in endeavors related to solving problems of protein structure prediction and disease . The graphics shown as it runs help users understand how it works and communication from the team keep users involved. Check out this coverage of the project by MSNBC.