Ableton Overture (Intermediate)

In this music technology-meets-classical composition activity, students will learn how to combine tried and tested compositional techniques (sequence, inversion, augmentation, diminution, and imitation) with many possibilities in Ableton Live’s session view. This composition task was designed for students ages 12 to 16 who are new to composing. The aims of the activity include: 1) inputting melodic and rhythmic information into a DAW and exploring composition devices; 2) reviewing melodic and rhythmic compositional devices, exploring simple accompaniment patterns, and combining a theme with an accompaniment pattern; 3) exploring sounds, octave ranges, and tempi in Ableton Live; 4) exploring combinations of themes with other students through sharing MIDI loops, making an arrangement, and justifying choices; and 5) presenting an arrangement to a fictional client.

Expression, purification and crystallization of a protein resulting from the inversion of the amino-acid sequence of a helical bundle

Earlier studies have found that the occurrence of inverse sequence identity in proteins is not indicative of three-dimensional similarity, but rather leads to different folds or unfolded proteins. Short helices, however, frequently keep their conformations when their sequences are inverted. To explore the impact of sequence inversion on long helices, revRM6, with the inverse amino-acid sequence relative to RM6, a highly stable variant of the ColE1 Rop protein, was engineered. RM6 is a highly regular four-α-helical bundle that serves as a model system for protein-folding studies. Here, the crystallization and preliminary crystallographic characterization of revRM6 are reported. The protein was overexpressed inEscherichia coli, purified to homogeneity and crystallized. The crystals belonged to space groupP41212, with unit-cell parametersa=b= 44.98,c= 159.74 Å, and diffracted to a resolution of 3.45 Å.