Serine Hydrolases in M. smegmatis

Indianapolis, IN

This poster introduces a method of designing and building atomically-accurate protein sculptures. The sculptures are in the style of artist Julian Voss-Andreae, who developed a technique of creating miter-cut backbone traces from protein databank (PDB) files. Featuring a user-friendly, web-based interface, our program downloads a structure from the PDB and creates an interactive model of the protein rendered as a miter-cut backbone structure. After the user adjusts properties to achieve the desired look, the program generates a list of cutting instructions necessary to create an atomically-accurate sculpture from a symmetrical piece of wood. For the undergraduate student involved in this project, the balance between the raw coding and creative design has helped enforce the idea that art and science are, contrary to popular belief, not polarizing fields. In this way, the experience in working on this project parallels one of the goals of the project overall: to explore the relationships between art and science. The protein sculptures this code allows you to build are fundamentally built from mutual inspiration from art and science. Through deploying this website, we hope to instill a sense of intrigue in these fields in artists and scientists alike.