Image talk:Rhodopsin-transducin.png

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I'm impressed that the creator of this complex image released it to the public domain. There is dignity and function in having done so. Can anyone re-trace the author's steps to create a similar image of some other type of interaction? I am curious to know how long it takes and how exactly it is done.

Jonathan Brand, Student

Well, I'm the one that created it so I'll answer. Making these is pretty easy. Protein crystal structures can be downloaded from the Protein Data Bank and opened with an appropriate application (I use UCSF Chimera). I usually just show the backbone and have it "rainbow" colored, since that makes for less messy images. After that, just photoshop in anything you need (like the lipids) and copy/paste in any other proteins (transducin and rhodopsin are from different structures). If you know what you're doing you can make an image similar to this in 5 or 10 minutes. Not very difficult. If you have further questions, feel free to ask on my talk page. --Dpryan (talk) 01:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)