You will choose an enzyme that is not covered in our lecture material (stay away from any enzymes used in glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, TCA, ETC, and fermentation). You will want to find an enzyme that already has a published crystal structure available (there are, quite literally, thousands to choose from). Check due dates on the syllabus. First come, first serve, so let me know when you find one you want to study (via email)! You may need to use interlibrary loan to get certain articles, which take about 48-72 h to come through. If you need help with getting an interlibrary loan, let me know. • The paper will be 5-8 pages, 1.5 spaced, 1-inch margins, with 12-point font in either Calibri, Bodoni, Gaudy Old Style, or Times New Roman. Note: If you have 4.5 pages, that is not 5 pages. If you can’t get to 5 pages, you didn’t do enough research on your enzyme. You will be using at least 12 references. Use the following resources to find your references:
§ NCBI and PDB websites
§ SciFinder and Google Scholar
§ Online journals (this is not considered an electronic resource)
§ ExPASy/Uniprot website
§ Books, hard copy journals, reviews, etc… from the library
§ Other resources may be used if they come from a .edu or .gov website
• You will have a separate references page that follows the ACS style guide (found in the library). This is not part of your page count.
• Appendix A will include your primary protein sequence. This is not included in your page count and is located after your references page.
• Appendix B will be the first page of each of your references. These are also not included in your page count.
• All tables, graphs, and images should be included within the body of the text, should have captions, and should be appropriately sized. If you need help with the text wrapping feature in Word, please see me. If it is really oversized I will shrink it to an appropriate size and consider your page count from there. What’s “appropriate”? You’ll be looking at a lot of articles for this paper, and should be getting a feel for it by reading those, but you are welcome to come ask me if you need a second opinion.
• You should include as much of the below information as possible. If some information isn’t known, you need to address that in your paper. It’s possible some of the information will be available by only mixing and matching organisms. That’s fine, as long as you mention this in your paper. I highly recommend breaking your paper up into sections with the following subtitles: an introduction, purification information, structural information, enzymatic information, metabolic information, and a conclusion. If you want to include other information, you can add extra sections if necessary (or add to those below if appropriate). The sections should include:
o Introduction: Why do we care about this enzyme? What’s the history of the enzyme? It is part of a bigger class of enzymes? This section should be a general introduction.
o Purification information: What tissue/organism is commonly used to study and purify the enzyme? How is the enzyme purified?
o Enzymatic information: How is enzyme activity measured? What are the Vmax and Km for the enzyme? Are there any inhibitors known? Is this enzyme a drug target? For what disease? What is the mechanism for the enzyme?
o Structural information: What is the X-ray structure, the molecular mass, primary sequence, and active site structure? What is the quaternary structure? Where is it found? What is the primary sequence (attach in appendix A).
o Metabolic information: What is the big picture for this enzyme (is it part of a pathway)? Is the enzyme regulated? o Conclusion: Revisit your introduction here and summarize the paper.
• You will need to be analyzing the papers you read, not simply restating the data you find in them. You may find conflicting information for certain areas, so present those that are most recent and that have the best research to back them up
