Academics Andre's Research Biocuriosities Books Graduate School History of Science Hot off the Press Igor's Research Interdisciplinarity Molecule of the Month Open Access Philip's Research Philosophy of Science Physics Physicsworld.com
Backreaction Ceclia's Blog at PHD Comics Cocktail Party Physics Cosmic Variance The Daily Transcript Easternblot Everyday Scientist The Evilutionary Biologist Freelancing Science The Futile Cycle Good Math, Bad Math iMechanica in singulo Incoherently Scattered Ponderings Juniorprof Klara Stefflova Life of a Lab Rat The Loom Metadatta Mixed States Morning Coffee Physics Not Even Wrong Notes from the biomass Notional Slurry OpenScience Project Pharyngula PLoS Blog Ponderings of a fool Recombinants The Sandwalk SciAm Observations ScienceBlogs Scientific Clearing House Shtetl-Optimized Three-toed Sloth Uncertain Principles What's New by Bob Park
If you have a headache and take a drug to block the pain, you’ll notice that the effects of the drug wear off in a few hours. This happens because you have a powerful detoxification system that finds unusual chemicals, like drugs, and flushes them out of your body. This system fights all sorts of unpleasant chemicals that we eat and breathe, including drugs, poisonous compounds in plants, carcinogens formed during cooking, and environmental pollutants. The cytochrome p450 enzymes are our first line of defense in this chemical battle.
The cytochrome p450 enzymes find unusual molecules and add oxygen atoms to them. In most cases, this has the effect of making the molecule more soluble in water, and thus, easier to flush out of the body. The added oxygen also provides a ready handle for other detoxifying enzymes to take hold and further modify, and destroy, these toxic molecules. This task of adding oxygen is chemically tricky, and cytochrome p450 enzymes use a powerful molecular tool to perform the reaction: an iron atom in a heme group.
More info and high res images here.
Biocurious is written by Andre Brown and Philip Johnson, since 2005. Content of the weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Try these sites for 3D views.
http://molvis.sdsc.edu/fgij/fg.htm?mol=1w0e
or
http://molvis.sdsc.edu/fgij/fg.htm?mol=2j0d
From
FirstGlance in Jmol
A simple tool for macromolecular visualization.
through
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
http://www.nature.com/nsmb/journal/v13/n2/full/nsmb0206-93.html