Principles of Structural Biology (Fall 2005)    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. 12th.
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


Course Schedule

Week 1 (9/12 - 9/16)
Principles of protein structure and folding
Steve Hubbard / Neville Kallenbach

Week 2 (9/19 - 9/23)
Introduction to x-ray crystallography and
electron microscopy
Steve Hubbard / Da-Neng Wang

Week 3 (9/26 - 9/30)
Protein-nucleic acid recognition
Joel Belasco

Week 4 (10/3 - 10/7)
Membrane proteins
Da-Neng Wang

Week 5 (10/10 - 10/14)
Enzyme structure and mechanism
Xiang-Peng Kong

Week 6 (10/17 - 10/21)
Chaperone-assisted protein folding and protein degradation
David Ron

Week 7 (10/24 - 10/28)
No class - Skirball retreat

Week 8 (10/31 - 11/4)
Ligand-receptor recognition
Moosa Mohammadi

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

Week 10 (11/14 - 11/18)
Molecular machines - myosin, kinesin, ion pumps
David Stokes

Week 11 (11/21 - 11/25)  Mon. only (Thanksgiving week)
Mid-term exam

Week 12 (11/28 - 12/2)
Analysis of proteins by mass spectrometry
Tom Neubert
NMR methods for structure determination
Alexej Jerschow
Computational approaches in structural biology
Tim Cardozo

Week 13 (12/5- 12/9)
Mass spectrometry lab
Tom Neubert
Electron microscopy lab
David Stokes / Da-Neng Wang
X-ray crystallography lab
Steve Hubbard / Xiang-Peng Kong


Useful Links

Kinemage files

Take the new and improved stereo test!

Swiss-PdbViewer

Protein Data Bank