A Protein Alpha Helix
The alpha helix — Linus Pauling's Nobel-winning discovery — is the most common secondary structure of proteins. Watch it move in molecular dynamics.
An alpha helix is a sequence of amino acids in a protein that are twisted into a coil. It is the most common secondary structure of proteins. The discovery of the alpha helix was considered as a key contribution of Linus Pauling that led to his Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1954. This page shows a molecular dynamics simulation of an alpha helix. The helix is shown in the Cartoon mode with temperature coloring that represents the average kinetic energy of the residues.