Question

Please explain the drawing...thank you so much!

The three-dimensional structure of the delta-opioid receptor is shown to the left. 9. What secondary structural features can you see in the receptor? 10. The receptor penetrates through the cell membrane. Draw a lipid bilayer around the receptor oriented as you might expect it to pass through the membrane. I. Label where you would expect to find hydrophobic and polar amino acids.

Answer 1

9. The structure shows presence of alpha-helices as the secondary structure.

10. The most likely orientation for the receptor while penetrating the membrane is shown in the following image where each structure with red circles and black lines represent lipid bilayer molecules.

11. The polar amino acid in the protein structures are expected to remain on the outer surface where it can interact with water, while the hydrophobic amino acids are likely to be present in the interior of the protein so that these amino acids do not interact with water. Therefore the likely position for these amino acids are shown in the following image: