Education series: Discover proteins with 3D printing

By ML -
Welcome to the first mini-series of educational blogs with 3D printing. In Discover Proteins, you will learn how to download and print complex 3D molecules such as proteins.

Start exploring unique structures of proteins using your 3D printer. 


In this mini tutorial, you will see how easy it is to do this. With the ease and convenience to print pretty much any structure you can find in the protein database, there is really so much you can do for your classroom in this amazing field of science. Get the kids excited to learn more about the protein by exploring their 3D structures and let them feel, hold and visualize the proteins in their hands.

A Hemoglobin Molecule

In this blog, I have printed the hemoglobin molecule as a demonstration. It is really quite easy to download the files, convert them and send them to the 3D printer. This is a good opportunity for young kids to explore and learn about the World Wide Protein Data Bank (www.rscb.org), there is so much information that they can find here. Follow these easy steps to download and print your favorite protein.

Step 1: Install Python and Pymol
Step 2: Go to the World Wide Protein Data Bank and search for the protein of your interest
Step 3: Download the 3D structure, the PDB file and select the Text file for the uncompressed version or the .GZ file for the compressed version
Step 4: Open the PDB file in Pymol to view the 3D structure of the protein. Choose surface to view and save as VRML file. File>Save Image As> VRML2.
Step 5: Open Meshlab and the WRL file as Import>Mesh then export the mesh as an STL file.
Step 6: Now you can load the STL file into your 3D printer and start printing.

For a more detailed step-by-step instruction guide, check out this Instrutable page:
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Print-a-Protein-Modeling-a-Molecular-Machine/

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