Recently I have been extremely interested in the proteins of cell membranes and their functions. It's amazing to see how they play such a central role in understanding cellular respiration, neurobiology and electron transmission and many other areas.
At the same time, I'm fascinated about the artifical synthesis of proteins by assemblying the base sequences (not extracting from prokaryotic cells) and the other relevant stuff.
Therefore I turned to research and found out the very intriguing and attractive (certainly elegant) research by Roderick MacKinnon who subsequently won the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his discovery of potassium-sodium channel in the cell.
This is from official Nobel Prize website. I also read a nice interview briefly about his discoveries and this personal life in Scientific American. The thing I gotta say
AMAZING!!
I'm always happy about people's passion of biophysics and neurobiology. Biophysics is an area I'm not familiar with and it seems that it has such a close relationship with neurobiology that the discoveries of biophysics (such as electrical conduction) can be largely applied to other fields in neurobiology.
Unfortunately, the gating process (which is the part I'm SUPER interested in) has been fully understood. Furthermore, the crystallisation of proteins is still complicated. But can't we make protein individually and insert into liposome? Can we find out the genes on the chromosomes and resemble them by artifical transcriptions?
PS: I know there're lots of devoted scientists that every year spend lots of time investigating gene expression. I'm more inclined to see whether there's an alternative way to make proteins. From mRNA? Interesting....
Anyway, this research is possibly one of the best I've read in my life.
At the same time, I'm fascinated about the artifical synthesis of proteins by assemblying the base sequences (not extracting from prokaryotic cells) and the other relevant stuff.
Therefore I turned to research and found out the very intriguing and attractive (certainly elegant) research by Roderick MacKinnon who subsequently won the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his discovery of potassium-sodium channel in the cell.
This is from official Nobel Prize website. I also read a nice interview briefly about his discoveries and this personal life in Scientific American. The thing I gotta say
AMAZING!!
I'm always happy about people's passion of biophysics and neurobiology. Biophysics is an area I'm not familiar with and it seems that it has such a close relationship with neurobiology that the discoveries of biophysics (such as electrical conduction) can be largely applied to other fields in neurobiology.
Unfortunately, the gating process (which is the part I'm SUPER interested in) has been fully understood. Furthermore, the crystallisation of proteins is still complicated. But can't we make protein individually and insert into liposome? Can we find out the genes on the chromosomes and resemble them by artifical transcriptions?
PS: I know there're lots of devoted scientists that every year spend lots of time investigating gene expression. I'm more inclined to see whether there's an alternative way to make proteins. From mRNA? Interesting....
Anyway, this research is possibly one of the best I've read in my life.
