Morphing Movie

Morphing between atomic structures can be calculated wih the morph command and played back in an animation. This movie shows morphing between two conformations of the FGFR1 kinase domain:

• inactive structure (PDB 3C4F, chain A)
• activated structure (PDB 3GQI, chain A) with phosphorylated tyrosines and bound ATP analog

The tyrosine side chains and ATP analog are color-coded by element: light blue carbon, red oxygen, blue nitrogen, and orange phosphorus.

Morphing and other setup was done with the command file kmorph-prep.cxc, followed by interactively positioning the structure and saving the view, then running kmorph-play.cxc to add 2D labels and record the movie.

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Potassium Channel-Calmodulin Complex

KCNQ1 is the pore-forming subunit of a cardiac potassium channel. It binds to calmodulin, and mutations in either of these proteins can cause congenital long QT syndrome, a dangerous propensity for irregular heartbeats. In the image, a structure of the KCNQ1/calmodulin complex (PDB 5vms) has been assembled into the native tetrameric form with the sym command. The view is from the cytoplasmic side, with KCNQ1 shown as surfaces, calmodulin as cartoons, and calcium ions as balls. A pastel palette from ColorBrewer has been used to color the surfaces, darkened with color modify for the cartoons, and “rotated” 45° in hue for the ions. See the command file colormod.cxc.

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