Homology Modeling Part-I - assigned 10/5/11, due 10/19/11

You are to make a homology model (aka comparative model) of the human enzyme Neutral Cholesterol Ester Hydrolase 1 (NCEH1) using the Swiss Model server.   The NCEH1 enzyme has the NCBI accession code: Q6PIU2 or gi: 74737782

Websites visited in class
Swiss Model  - http://swissmodel.expasy.org/
NCBI PubMed - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/
DeepView - http://spdbv.vital-it.ch/
DeepView  - http://www.usm.maine.edu/~rhodes/SPVTut/index.html
PyMol - http://pymol.org/
Protein Data Bank - www.pdb.org
Principles of Protein Structure, Comparative Protein Modeling and Visualization
ExPASy  (http://us.expasy.org/) 
CLUSTALW
(http://www.ebi.ac.uk/clustalw/) - a program that generates multi-sequence alignments in several formats 
BOXSHADE (http://www.ch.embnet.org/software/BOX_form.html) - takes output from Clustalw and makes nice figure  you need for this assignment. 

Complete the 5 parts below to be turned in by our 10/19/11 class

1) Explain your choice of templates used for the modeling assignment.  In your answer make sure to make a convincing argument of why you chose the templates you did.  Also, pick at least one template which has an active site ligand for the figure to be made in part-2.

2) Make a figure using the program PyMol that shows a cartoon of your final "best" NCEH1 model.  Draw the active site Ser, His, Asp and active site ligands as ball and stick in the figure.  Submit to me the figure as a png file and insert a small picture of this in your questions writeup to make it pretty.

3) Prepare a multi- protein sequence alignment of your choice of templates aligned with the target sequence.  You could use the programs ClustalW/Boxshade (demonstrated in class) or other programs of your choosing.  In addition to turning in your final sequence alignments, you should use this approach to help make decisions of what templates to include (part 1).

4) Send me (bahnson@udel.edu) an e-mail, which includes your best human NCEH1 model aligned with each of the templates you used to make the homology model.   This file should be a pdb format file.   When you receive your results back, open up the *.pdb file in Deep View to inspect file. 

5) Sometimes, homology models that are constructured from several templates versus a homology model that is made from only the best template can give complementary information.  Is that the case for your homology modeling of human NCEH1?  Incorporate information derived from parts 1-3 above,  to answer the question posed here.  Explain. 

6) If you were going to use a homology model to help solve a crystal structure of  human NCEH1 by molecular replacement.  Which homology model from part-5 would you use and why?  Also, would you make any changes to the homology model in order to use it as a molecular replacement search model?  Describe the changes you will make and explain why. 

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