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Grace Hsu, Evelyn Maizels, Deb Milkowski (University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA)
Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) is an open source molecular visualization software used for modeling, analyzing, and visualizing molecules such as nucleic acids and proteins. Structures from the Protein Data Bank (PDB) can be loaded into VMD directly. It has many options for visualization to produce publication quality graphics. This work is an application of VMD to create images highlighting an area of research in regards to pyruvate kinase M2 isoform (PKM2), generated from alternative splicing of the PKM gene. PKM2 expresses the 56 amino acid exon 10, while PKM1 expresses the 56 amino acid exon 9. The difference between these exons is restricted to 22 unique amino acid residues. The unique region within exon 10 imparts a different functionality to the enzyme that includes being a transcriptional coactivator and tending to form dimers rather than tetramers. PKM2’s role in histone modification that leads to epigenetic change in gene expression and tumorigenesis is exemplified in a recent study published by Yang et al. where it was shown that PKM2 directly interacts with histone H3, phosphorylating it at threonine 11. An illustration was created based upon this research paper.