Introducing secondary school students to molecular modelling

Over 300 secondary school students attended the Sciences and Digital Technology Day organized on the campus of the Université Bordeaux 1 on May 17^th. Two scientists from the IECB - Dr. Jean Dessolin, senior researcher, and Judith Elkaïm, PhD student – contributed to this science promotion event. Their goal: introducing students to the principles of molecular modelling.

« Secondary school students are already familiar with the notion of protein composition through their science classes" explains Jean-Dessolin. “However, the representation of proteins as tridimensional objects is something very new to them. We discovered that secondary school students do not yet make the connection between the therapeutic effects of medicaments and their effect on specific protein targets. In our presentation, we therefore went back to the role that certain proteins play in cellular functions and the way medicaments interfere with their mode of action”.

According to Judith Elkaïm: « Because of the way science is taught at the secondary school level, students are more interested in the hands-on experimental approaches, working with animals, cells or proteins rather than computer programs. They therefore do not immediately grasp the added-value of digital technology with respect to modeling of molecular interactions (in silico science). We explained, and showed, how molecular modeling facilitates the early screening of potential medicaments, thus saving time and money”.

This picture, taken from Jean Dessolin et Judith Elkaïm’s presentation,

shows the coupling of two Pontine monomers after the docking of the ATP (shown in red).

The IECB team in Molecular Modelling is now equipped with 300 core processors, a facility which can perform high throughput simulations of several tenths of thousands of molecules per day.