Assignment: Detailed visualization of a molecule and how it works in a mechanism in the body

Audience: College students

Programs used: 3DsMax 2019, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Protein Data Bank, VMD

The purpose of this assignment was to fully render in detail a complex structure of a protein and describe its function. I chose the Rhodopsin-Transducin complex and did detailed research of the structure of this protein. Several papers were read in order too fully understand the structure of the G-Protein complex.

The two papers I read:

Jastrzebska, B., Ringler, P., Palczewski, K., & Engel, A. (2013). The rhodopsin-transducin complex houses two distinct rhodopsin molecules.Journal of structural biology,182(2), 164-172.

Gao, Y., Hu, H., Ramachandran, S., Erickson, J. W., Cerione, R. A., & Skiniotis, G. (2019). Structures of the rhodopsin-transducin complex: insights into G-protein activation.Molecular cell,75(4), 781-790.

Using the papers listed above I looked into the information about the protein on the protein data bank, and saw the missing residues that they did not account for.

This was amended by using another homologue protein to place the missing residues into the visualization.

Initial Composition Sketches - creative brainstorming for poster

First draft of poster (Without missing helix)

Original draft was to measure different color compositions until I arrived at one color scheme that seemed to fit well. Missing helix was left out in this rendering.

Second Draft of Poster

Changes made in color position to give more detail about the subunits in transducin and add in the missing helixes that were missing in the papers and on the protein data bank.