Lecture Materials

Unit III: Protein Function

Lecture 3 - Hemoglobin: A Case Study of Protein Structure-Function Relationships

Hemoglobin (Hb) and Myoglobin (Mb) function as oxygen transport and storage molecules in higher organisms. There functions have been long studied and, together, provide a wealth of examples of how the structure and function of proteins are related.

Lecture 4 - Enzymes: Basic Concepts and Kinetics

Enzymes are biological catalysts. Nearly every reaction that takes place in a living cell is catalyzed by an enzyme. Most enzymes are proteins. Beside their role in speeding up the rates of chemical reactions, enzymes also play an important role in controlling the flow of material through the myriad of metabolic pathways required to sustain a living cell.

Lecture 5 - Catalytic Strategies

Enzymes have evolved an array of different strategies or enhancing the power and specificity of the reactions they catalyze. For numerous enzymes the details have been worked out at the atomic level. In this lecture we will focus on four examples: chymotrypsin, carbonic anhydrase, the EcoRV restriction endonuclease, and nucleoside monophosphate kinases.

Lecture 6 - Regulatory Strategies

Living cells contain thousands of metabolites linked to one another by a dizzying array of chemical reactions. These reactions link one metabolite to another and collectively are arranged into metabolic pathways, which crisscross and intersect to form a large interconnected network. Each reaction is catalyzed by one or more enzymes and many of these enzymes play a large role in controlling the flow of material through the network. In this lecture we will focus on some of the strategies used to regulate enzyme activity, and consequently, metabolic processes.

Return to Top