FMDV 3C protease in motion

Below is a morph animation showing the conformational changes that occur in FMDV 3C protease when it bind a peptide substrate. The animation is accompanied by a commentary which describes the important features of the movements that occur on peptide binding.

The structure of the 3C-peptide complex shown in the animation is described in Zunszain et al. (2009) Insights into cleavage specificity from the crystal structure of foot-and-mouth disease virus 3C protease complexed with a peptide substrate J. Mol. Biol. (in press). See here for links to the paper).

The movie is in Quicktime format which should play within most modern browsers. If it doesn’t play, you can obtain the Quicktime plugin for free from Apple for Mac or PC platforms.

The morph animation was prepared usind the RigiMOL plugin withing iPyMOL v0.99 in conjunction with eMovie. For more details on eMovie see: Hodis, E., Schreiber, G., Rother, K., Sussman, J.L. eMovie: a storyboard-based tool for making molecular movies Trends in Biochemical Sciences 32, 199-204 (2007) (Abstract).