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Chapter 5: Enzymes And The Dynamics Of Proteins |
1. Relevance of Topic
Figure 5.9 shows normal RBCs and sickle-shaped RBCs from a person with sickle-cell anemia. Large populations of people suffer from this disease and it illustrates how small changes in the basic structure of a protein can have major consequences.
Altitude sickness, an illness caused by the effects of high altitude on the RBC's ability to bind oxygen, is a common problem when adventurers set out to scale Mt. Everest and other extremely high-altitude mountains.
Many athletes adhere to the "live high, compete low" idea that prepares their bodies for maximum performance at low altitudes. Any discussion of athletic training could be made more interesting with this idea.
On the World Wide Web, databases are available that make available all the protein sequences that are already known to man. Their existence should be a testament to the importance of proteins and their subunits.
Figure 5.6 shows soldiers in World War I using gas masks as protection from deadly nerve gas. Nerve gas is a perfect example of an irreversible inhibitor. Unfortunately, it is still fairly common for there to be newsprint relating to the production of, storage, or use of nerve gas in our world today.
2. Continuity
Proteins are a critical part of the cellular machinery. An understanding of them is needed in order to appreciate the beauty of cells and their organelles, a topic that follows in the next chapters.
The topic of proteins is critical to an understanding of genetics and evolution.
3. Demonstration Activities
Text section 5.1
1. Take a strip of magnesium and show that it is stable at room temperature. Then place the end of the strip in a flame and watch it burn (but don't look directly at it and caution students about this). Use this as an illustration of how sometimes energy must be added to a system to set a reaction in motion.
Text section 5.5
1. Discuss examples of fever or hypothermia as extremes on the temperature continuum for an animal. Since all enzymes operate most effectively within specific temperature ranges, ask what happens when the organism's body temperature exceeds that range in either direction.
Text section 5.7
1. Display several different commercially available multi-vitamins and the content panels on their packages. Many vitamins are coenzymes that must be supplied through diet or dietary supplements.
Text section 5.8
1. Computer-generated animations can show enzymes, substrates, and various types of inhibitors. This can also be done with models, but since it is a dynamic system, animation does the best job of accurately representing the system as it is currently understood.
2. Poison nerve gas is an example of a substance that acts as an irreversible inhibitor. Show newsprint covering the political situations surrounding countries that continue to manufacture and threaten to use such agents.
Text section 5.12
1. Use Figure 5.9 to illustrate how a small change in protein structure can have profound functional consequences, as in the case of sickle-cell anemia. Show an illustration (e.g. a map such as the one in Figure 23.9) of how sickle-cell anemia can be concentrated among populations and discuss the genetic and evolutionary implications.
Text section 5.13
1. Use Figure 5.10 to illustrate how protein primary structure is a record of evolutionary history.
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