“In this project, Country Day students collaborate on primary scientific research. We started by 3D printing a dynamic physical model of a protein backbone using the open source code provided by the authors of an interesting paper who have been happy to help us learn their techniques. We are now extending their work as we aim to print a dynamic model of an entire protein: insulin. Pictured in the background of this page, insulin is a small hormone involved in the regulation of sugar in the body and will require the modeling of many other residues than the alanine described in the original work. To date, we have successfully printed accurate models of the disulfide bond between two cysteine residues (depicted in yellow above), the proline residue (which contains a unique ring-structure, middle-right in the image above), the glycine residue, the leucine residue, and the phenylalanine residue. In the coming years, students will continue to build on this body of work as they gain invaluable experience in the exciting field of scientific research.” - Tom Collins, Project Creator & Brittany Lott, Project Advisor

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