Principles of Structural Biology (Fall 2008)    G16.2004

The goals of this course are to provide students with an introduction to protein structure and to demonstrate how knowledge of the three-dimensional structures of proteins affords an in-depth understanding of biological processes. A primer on structure determination by x-ray crystallography, electron microscopy and NMR spectroscopy will also be given.

4 credit hours.
Classes meet Mon., Wed. and Fri., 10:30 - 12:00.
Course starts on Mon., Sept. 8th.
Lectures (Mon. and Wed.) will be held in the Skirball 3rd floor seminar room, and the discussion session (Fri.) will be held in the Skirball 3rd floor conference room.
Recommended text: "Introduction to Protein Structure" by Branden and Tooze, available for purchase at the NYU Medical Bookstore and Amazon.com, and on reserve in the library.
Course director: Steve Hubbard - Skirball 3rd floor, Lab 4; 263-8938; hubbard@saturn.med.nyu.edu


Final paper sign-up

Discussion session sign-up


Useful Links

Protein Data Bank
PyMol (program download)
PyMol (users manual)
Kinemage files


Course Schedule

Week 1 (9/8 - 9/12)
Principles of protein structure /
Introduction to x-ray crystallography and electron microscopy
Steve Hubbard / Da-Neng Wang

Week 2 (9/15 - 9/19)
Histone modifications and regulation of gene expression
Rui-Ming Xu

Week 3 (9/22 - 9/26)
Protein-nucleic acid recognition
Joel Belasco

Week 4 (9/29 - 10/3)
Chaperone-assisted protein folding and protein degradation
David Ron

Week 5 (10/6 - 10/10)
Molecular machines - myosin, kinesin, ion pumps
David Stokes

Week 6 (10/13 - 10/17)
No class - Skirball retreat

Week 7 (10/20 - 10/24)
Enzyme structure and mechanism
Xiang-Peng Kong

Week 8 (10/27 - 10/31)
Ligand-receptor recognition
Moosa Mohammadi

Week 9 (11/3 - 11/7)
Protein-protein interactions in signal transduction
Steve Hubbard

Week 10 (11/10 - 11/14)
Membrane proteins
Da-Neng Wang

Week 11 (11/17 - 11/21)
Antigen-T cell recognition
Michelle Krogsgaard

Week 12 (11/24 - 11/28) (Mon. only - Thanksgiving week)
In-class exam (Mon.)

Week 13 (12/1 - 12/5) (Wed. & Fri.)
Computational approaches in structural biology (Wed.)
Rich Bonneau
Analysis of proteins by mass spectrometry (Fri.)
Tom Neubert

Week 14 (12/8 - 12/12) (Mon. only)
NMR methods for structure determination (Mon.)
Ranajeet Ghose (CCNY)