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Structure Comparison
A comparison of the structure of a muscle protein with the structure of a ribosome. The small protein, called 127, is one of about 300 proteins forming an elastic band, called titin, that endows muscle with passive elasticity. The ribosome is a complex of three large RNA molecules and 50 proteins with three-million atoms. It reads genetic information and synthesizes from it proteins of correct amino acid sequence. The ribosome cannot be subdivided in carrying out its function. A functioning ribosome will be simulated on the new Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) computer, located at the University of Texas at Austin, with thousands of processors. Protein 127 can be simulated on a laptop.
To learn more about research at TACC, see the NSF news release, "National Science Foundation Awards Texas Advanced Computing Center $59 Million for High-Performance Computing." (Date of Image: October 2006)
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Credit: Image courtesy Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; mercury cluster background image courtesy of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the board of trustees of the University of Illinois.
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