Proton Pump

To add to our discussion last week's chapter (Ch 2), I thought I'd put up something on proton pumps. Below is a video with voice-over giving a simple explanation, and p56-57;59 from Ch 2 has some generic information on ion pumps.


And here is the full 3D structure of 3B8C, a P-type proton pump, determined from X-ray crystallography experiments.


Right-click on the Jmol applet above to interact with the structure (highlight domains, calculate hydrogen bonds, show surface et cetera). If you want to visualise how this might fit into the cell membrane, try colouring residues by charge (e.g Select→Protein→Basic Residues (+), Color→Surfaces→Blue||Color→Structures→Cartoon→Blue ).

(Edit: If the above widget fails, or you want to look examine this in more detail, you can view the structure here.)