Find a protein using PDB explorer - decribe your protein, including what disease state or other real-world application it has.

For this exercise we were instructed to search PDBlite.org, which is a website designed to search for, and download macromolecules. There were no restrictions limiting our search criteria for these macromolecules. I decided to narrow my search to molecules relating to human alcohol dehydrogenase. Forty one related results matched my search. From this list I chose to explore the structure of Human Zinc-binding alcohol dehydrogenase 1 (ZADH1) pdb id # 2VNA.

With the above information I searched the National Center for Biotechnology Information for my molecule. From here I was able to identify my molecule derived from humans, and had tertiary structure as it only had a single unit/subunit. Shown above is a 3D image of the molecule which clearly shows the secondary structures: alpha helix and beta pleated sheets. Little information was given about the real world application of this molecule but it is assumed that it has a role with the binding of zinc to alcohol dehydrogenase. It is also assumed by the name of this molecule that alcohol dehydrogenase is an enzyme.


Having access to this tool allows researches to search known molecules by name, related topics, and even primary structure sequencing. Researchers now have the ability to compare unknown proteins or amino acids against researchers around the world. Another huge tool for researchers is the ability to search for molecules with a similar sequence against an existing molecule with a known function and make assumption on what function the unknown protein might have.