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Your mission is to move a pencil from one desk to another desk using only a pipe cleaner.
Materials: A pencil (or pen), and a pipe cleaner
There are three rules:
You may not touch the pencil (or pen) with your hands when you move the pencil from one desk to another.
You may bend the pipe cleaner any way needed when attaching it to the pencil.
After the pencil has been successfully moved, don’t unfold the pipe cleaner -- retain the shape that successfully moved the pencil.
Ready? Complete your mission.
Ready? Complete your mission.
Questions:
How did it go? On a separate piece of paper, draw the shape of the pipe cleaner that successfully moved the pencil.
Was the shape you chose the ONLY shape that would work? What shapes might other people come up with?
Successful pipe cleaner carriers likely had 1) a wrap or bend around the pencil, and 2) a handle.
The pipe cleaner could not function as a carrier without those structures.
Thus, the function and structure of the pipe cleaner are closely related.
What does this have to do with proteins?
Proteins, like pipe cleaners, are folded into specific shapes to perform their function.
These folded shapes can do their jobs successfully.
When the pipe cleaner and protein lose their shapes, they can no longer do their jobs.
When a protein loses its complicated folded structure, it is denatured.
Culinary processes like baking, frying, adding lemon juice or vinegar, or whipping all denature proteins. This changes the properties of, for example, a raw egg into a cooked egg. Cooking proteins changes the structure of the protein but does not change the nutritional value.
Comprehension Check: Use the graphic below to explain how a change in the DNA may result in a non-functioning protein.
The Pencil Protein Transfer activity was originally published in The American Biology Teacher as Modeling Protein Structure and Function: Pencil Transferase. Special thanks to Northwest Association for Biomedical Research.
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