Visualising protein interaction
CeR has been working with the School of Biological Science’s Juliet Gerrard to visualise the protein bonding of Human Peroxiredoxin 3, the second most common protein in the human body behind Haemoglobin. In a solution of PRX3 monomers (single units), the monomers will bond together to form dimers (paired units). These dimers then bond together to form rings, and the rings bond together to form a filament. This entire process has been simulated using the game engine Unity by CeR’s Nick Young and Bianca Haux in collaboration with David Doak, and works in the Vive.
The project is open source at https://github.com/uoa-eresearch/prx_fishtank
The project went to the Lorne conference in February 2018 on our portable VR backpack, and will be touring at the MOTAT Super STEM fair on Sunday 8th April 2018. As this event is targeted towards kids, we added some kid friendly special effects (changing rings to donuts when a monomer or dimer passes through them, and changing them to rusty rings when they interlock), and made it into a game, encouraging the user to form a single complete stack as quickly as possible.
We’ve also been working with the media productions team to film a composited “Mixed Reality” clip of the project in action – above is some test footage.
