Visualizing protein interactions and dynamics: evolving a visual language for molecular animation.

ABSTRACT: Undergraduate biology education provides students with a number of learning challenges. Subject areas that are particularly difficult to understand include protein conformational change and stability, diffusion and random molecular motion, and molecular crowding. In this study, we examined the relative effectiveness of three-dimensional visualization techniques for learning about protein conformation and molecular motion in association with a ligand-receptor binding event. Increasingly complex versions of the same binding event were depicted in each of four animated treatments. Students (n = 131) were recruited from the undergraduate biology program at University of Toronto, Mississauga. Visualization media were developed in the Center for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics at Harvard Medical

SUBMITTER: Jenkinson J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3292069 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature