Authors of original unit: Bruce Southey

Partner Projects: Biology Student Workbench

Grade Level: High school chemistry teachers

Subject Areas: Protein, fluorescent, GFP

Several bioluminescent coelenterates such as the jellyfish Aequorea victoria or the sea pansy Renilla reniformis emit green light from a green fluorescent protein (GFP). Investigators can use this tutorial to understand the genetic basis of this protein that transduces the blue light into green fluorescent light. The goal of the tutorial is to learn how to use bioinformatics tools by investigating the sequence and structure of this protein.

Intened for high school chemistry teachers, who wish to use computational tools in the classroom. Also suitable for introducatory college chemistry. May also be used directly by students for self-study.

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Introduction: background information on GFP.

Part 1: Opening An Account, Starting a new Session and Importing Sequences from Protein Databases

Part 2: Importing and Comparing Sequences, Creating an unrooted phylogenetic tree

Part 3: Examine the 3D Structure of a protein