M2
esiegel | June 17, 2013“God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die.” -Bill Watterson
Welcome back to another Messier Monday, only here on Starts With A Bang! With each new Monday, we take an in-depth look at a prominently visible random object from Messier's catalogue of 110 deep-sky curiosities, objects that range from stellar corpses to star-forming regions, to open clusters, globular clusters, distant galaxies, and even a few anomalies!
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons users Jim Cornmell and Zeimusu.
The objects in Messier's catalogue…
sporte | May 2, 2009Nick's post on Amantadine resistance in swine flu was so interesting, I had to look at the protein structures myself.
I couldn't find any structures with the S31N mutation that Nick discussed, but I did find some structures with the M2 protein and Amantadine. Not only are these structures beautiful, but you can look at them and see how the protein works and how the drug prevents the protein from functioning.
As Nick mentions, the M2 protein from influenza makes a channel for hydrogen ions within the viral membrane. The channel controls the pH inside the virus by opening and closing.…