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Monday, November 03, 2008

Monday's Molecule #95

 
This is a very famous molecule, featured in all biochemistry textbooks. You have to identify the molecule—be careful there are several possibilities and it's easy to go wrong. You don't have to tell me the species. (Hint: the three red amino acid side chains are aspartate, histidine, and serine.)

This week's Nobel Laureate(s) won the prize for his work with this molecule (and several others).

The first one to correctly identify the molecule and name the Nobel Laureate(s), wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club. Previous winners are ineligible for one month from the time they first collected the prize. There are only two ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Haruhiko Ishii, and Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Laureate(s) so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow. I reserve the right to select multiple winners if several people get it right.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours. Comments are now open.

UPDATE: The molecule is chymotrypsin, not chymotrysinogen or pepsin or elastin. These proteins are called serine proteases because they have a catalytic serine residue in the active site. The Nobel Laureate is John Howard Northrop, the first person to purify and crystallize chymotrypsin. The first person to get it right was Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin, who just recently fell off the ineligible list.


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