The BPS Art of Science Image Contest took place again this year, during the 63rd Annual Meeting in Baltimore. The image that won first place was submitted by Angela Barragan, PhD Candidate at the Beckman Institute UIUC. Barragan took some time to provide information about the image and the science it represents.
What about this image made you submit it for the contest?
Research conducted for several decades at our group, the NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, led by our late mentor, Professor Klaus Schulten, has allowed us to contribute to the understanding of the structure and function of the purple bacterial photosynthetic organelle. This organelle, called the chromatophore, uses intricate machinery of proteins that harvest sunlight to produce the cellular energy, the ATP.
How did you compose this image?
In this immersive image created in VMD (Visual Molecular Dynamics), we aimed for the viewer to feel at the interior of the photosynthetic purple bacteria, which holds hundreds of copies of these spherical chromatophores. We produced the image by fitting modeled spherical chromatophores into an EM tomogram of a bacterium. John Stone, the lead VMD developer, created new molecule instancing and GPU ray tracing features, to allow such renderings in order to capture in great detail the intricate machinery of proteins, all described in atomistic detail (tens of millions of atoms are actually included in this image).
How does this image reflect your scientific research?
The research developed in our group, by Melih Sener, allowed us to have a proper understanding of the spherical structure, as well as the distribution of the chromatophores in the purple bacteria. On the other hand, other branches of research aimed to investigate the mechanisms of each of the proteins involved in the photosynthesis have been developed in our group. In particular, I have been interested in unveiling the physical mechanism of the bc1 complex (shown here as magenta proteins).
Can you please provide a few real-world examples of your research?
The research developed in our group, by Melih Sener, allowed us to have a proper understanding of the spherical structure, as well as the distribution of the chromatophores in the purple bacteria. On the other hand, other branches of research aimed to investigate the mechanisms of each of the proteins involved in the photosynthesis have been developed in our group. In particular, I have been interested in unveiling the physical mechanism of the bc1 complex (shown here as magenta proteins).
Because of more complex forms of photosynthetic organisms, such as plants, share many characteristics with these primitive photosynthetic purple bacteria, understanding the structure and function of its chromatophores and all their components has applications in the bioenergetics community.
Do you have a website where our readers can view your recent research?
To find more about our research, visit http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/Categories/bioenergeticMembranes/
A few of our latest relevant publications are listed below.
Determination of cell doubling times from the return-on-investment time of photosynthetic vesicles based on atomic detail structural models.
A. Hitchcock, C. Neil Hunter, and M. Sener.
J. Phys. Chem. B, 121:3787-3797, 2017.
Overall energy conversion efficiency of a photosynthetic vesicle.
Melih Sener, Johan Strumpfer, Abhishek Singharoy, C. Neil Hunter, and Klaus Schulten.
eLife, 10.7554/eLife.09541, 2016. (PMC: PMC5001839)
Atomic detail visualization of photosynthetic membranes with GPU-accelerated ray tracing.
John E. Stone, Melih Sener, Kirby L. Vandivort, Angela Barragan, Abhishek Singharoy, Ivan Teo, Joao V. Ribeiro, Barry Isralewitz, Bo Liu, Boon Chong Goh, James C. Phillips, Craig MacGregor-Chatwin, Matthew P. Johnson, Lena F. Kourkoutis, C. Neil Hunter, and Klaus Schulten
Parallel Computing, 55:17-27, 2016. (PMC: PMC4890717)