Authors of original unit: John Sabo, Kevin Messner

Partner Projects: Biology Student Workbench

Grade Level: High school chemistry teachers

Subject Areas: LIS350GK, 350GK, 350 GK, GK-12, Biology Workbench, Biology Student Workbench, biology, laboratory, cholesterol, cholesterolemia, bioinformatics, protein, lipoprotein

The unit discusses the inherited disease familial hypercholesterolemia. The overall purpose is to teach the user how to search protein databases using the Biology Workbench, a suite of bioinformatics tools, to conduct research. This tutorial uses tools that range in complexity, and it is designed to allow the user to walk through the research process, step-by-step, in order to get the desired results and achieve understanding of the molecular biology of this disease.

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

Web browser (preferably Firefox) that is Javascript-enabled. To find out which plugins are already installed on your mozilla/firefox browser, just type 'about:plugins' in address box. You can download each plug-in component from the links provided and you can test if your system support Javascript from here.

Introduction: Background information on Familial hypercholesterolemia

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

Part 2: Importing Sequences and Viewing Structures from Protein Databases

Part 3: Finding the Mutant Lipoprotein Sequence: Using BLAST

Part 4: Aligning the sequences: Using CLUSTALW

Part 5: Predicting the Secondary Structure of a Protein Sequence: Using GOR4

Part 6: Determining the Isoelectric Point of the Proteins