URC Poster

The creator of the poster I reviewed presented information on primary tumors and brain metastasis. It was nicely laid out with pictures pertinent to the topic. He provided enough detail with statistics and information on diagnosis, signs/symptoms, stages of growth, treatment and environmental effects without overwhelming. The only critique I would offer would be to avoid yellow ink as it is difficult to read.

Three Major Themes of Biochemistry

I would identify proteins, DNA and cellular energy as the three major themes of this course. Proteins encompass chapters 3-8 including amino acids, enzymes, and enzyme mechanisms. The DNA topics include nucleic acid structure, replication, transcription and translation. Cellular energy topics include thermodynamics, carbohydrates, glycolosis, citric acid cycle, lipid metabolism, electron transport, oxidation and phosphorylation. All of the topics are interelated. Enzymes affect DNA through direction of translation and transcription, methylation and cleavage. Enzymes direct the various processes of metabolism such as isomerization, phosphorylation and oxidation. Although I had an overview of the larger processes involved I did not have an understanding of the cellular level. I have learned where these processes occur, the multitude of steps involved, and how the intricacies of these processes disease happens.

How would you explain the connection between glucose entering the body and energy created by the body to a friend?

Glucose enters the body through carbohydrates ingested as part of our diets. It is then processed in the body through a series of steps involving a variety of enzymes. These steps include glycolysis, the citric acid cycle and electron transport. These enzymes convert glucose into a form of energy known as ATP that the cells use. This process is reversible with modification through a process called gluconeogenesis, self regulating (if there is too much ATP the process slows if there is too much glucose the process increases) and continuously occurring.

What knowledge have you connected with past knowledge?

The second half of the semester has proven to be more relevent to topics that we experience on a daily basis and therefore our real life base of knowledge. I have learned about enzymes which as I am more aware of them realize they are all around us. My friend was drinking an energy drink which contained D-ribose, we use enzymatic cleansers in the hospital where I work to remove biological residues (lipase was one), and they are utilizing enzymes to neutralize an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While I, without additional research, don't know what each of these enzymes provides I have a greater understanding of their importance. I learned the internal mechanisms and causes of a family disease, diabetes, and how all the systems affect each other. Although I had a good understanding of the big picture, how food affects the body, mood, etc of someone with diabetes, I did not understand the way the metabolism worked and how the different organs and organelles of the cells participated. I also learned through my biochemical connections presentation how delicate these systems are and how one dysfunction (ie - GLUT4) can cause major problems.

Interesting Biochemistry Website

The website that I found interesting was www.sciencedaily.com. There are articles here relating to all fields of science. In a quick search for biochemistry topics it produced an article on quantum dot spotlighting DNA repair proteins in motion and early Alzheimer detection. It has great color pictures and access is free.

What knowledge have you connected with past knowledge?

As we learned from the first post, biochemistry is a multidisciplinary view of the molecular nature of life. This class has overlapped with the information presented in several classes that I have attended in the past. Biology presented the cellular structure and function of plants and animals. General chemistry provided a view of the interactions of individual molecules to create larger molecules. Organic chemistry presented carbon bonded functional groups and their interactions. All of these concepts have been revisited in our initial studies of biochemistry.

Find a protein using PDB explorer - describe your protein, including what disease state or other real-world application it has.

Utilizing the key word diabetes in the pdblite.org the site provided an article with a protein. The code associated with the protein is 1kzw. It is described as the human intestinal fatty acid binding protein which binds lipids in the cytosol of enterocytes. It is a naturally occurring nucleotide polymorphism.
This protein exhibits secondary traits of helixes and pleated sheets (visualized as green crayons and tan arrows respectively on diagram). It has no subunits and therefore no quaternary traits.
The amino acid sequence would be useful for research in comparing the structure and function of one sequence to that of another. Similar sequences may combine, react, substitute in the same way therefore allowing for predictions of unknown or underresearched sequences.

On the pdblite.org site two views of the molecule are available. The all atoms shows the entire molecule including side chains whereas the backbone view does not show the side chains.