Outreach



The overall goal of this event will be to enhance scientific appreciation and enthusiasm by high school students for protein structure and function. The high school classroom often lacks connections to authentic science and how it is applied in a research lab. We plan to use our skills and experience as undergraduate researchers to go into a local high school classroom and share our knowledge and passion about the proteins we are investigating.

We will engage students in a hands-on activity that is tied to a computer-based exercise to visualize protein structure. Initially, we will give a brief overview of our individual research projects in order to provide students with a context explaining how the concepts discussed in the activity can be applied outside of the classroom. Groups of 2-3 students will be assigned to work on a single protein for the duration of the activity. The groups will be asked to access a model of their protein from the PDB and visualize it in PyMOL. We will help students manipulate their structure to define the active site and examine ligand interactions within the active site. The students will create images of their proteins as a basic introduction to protein visualization.

Using "Modeling Mini Toobers” the students will physically recreate their protein’s active site, specifying the amino acids involved in ligand interactions. Groups will be assigned a physical set of possible inhibitory compounds, and asked to rank compounds from most likely to bind, to least likely to bind. In order to make accurate predictions, students will need to think critically about the possible interactions between active site amino acids and the various compounds. At the conclusion of the activity, students will be shown the predicted virtual screening scores corresponding to each ligands. Groups will then be able to compare their own predictions to the predictions made by the virtual screening software.

Equipment & Supplies 3D Molecular Designs: Amino Acid Starter Kit© (6-Group Set) 3D Molecular Designs: Potassium Channel Bound with Scorpion Toxin Mini Model

The Protein Society: Member Mini Grants  The goal of this program is to enable members to hold protein science-reltaed events in their communities. These events could be meetings, seminars, workshops, experiments, networking or other small gatherings that bring groups together to learn, collaborate, share perspectives and make professional connections. Also encouraged are outreach events intended to communicate the unique appeal and fascinating potential of research involving proteins to junior investigators, students and under-represented minorities. Among members is VDSer Tony Garcia who sponsors an outreach program in the Austin area. For more information on this program go this the Protein Society's website below.

@http://www.proteinsociety.org/join/benefits/minigrants/

Science Olympiad
2016 - Ashley C, Lisa S, Simone M. will coordinate the event.

2015 - Tony, Alberto, Cidia and Dr. B helped run the Protein Modeling event for the UT Science Olympiad.

[|Science Olympiad page for UT:]

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