Scioly.org

Protein Modeling C: Students will use computer visualization and online resources to construct physical models of the CRISPR Cas9 protein that is being engineered to edit plant and animal cell genomes, and answer a series of questions about the chemistry of protein folding and the interaction of structure and function for model proteins.

Protein Modeling Wiki

Protein Modeling Test Exchange

http://cbm.msoe.edu/scienceOlympiad/

Official Protein Modeling Event Facebook Page (many photos of models from nationals are posted here)

Past Threads:
2011 (Pluripotent Stem Cells)
2012 (Apoptosis)
2015 (Human Genome Editing)
2016 (Dopamine and Serotonin Synthesis)
2019 (Anti-CRISPR)

Past Question Marathons: 2015, 2019

Super interested in the onsite computer visualization portion. It's sad to see the onsite portion go. Thoughts on this?

CookiePie1 wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 8:10 am Super interested in the onsite computer visualization portion. It's sad to see the onsite portion go. Thoughts on this?

$$$

Unome wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 8:34 am

CookiePie1 wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 8:10 am Super interested in the onsite computer visualization portion. It's sad to see the onsite portion go. Thoughts on this?

$$$

^^^ As an invitational tournament director, the on-site build was expensive to run. While it was easily an order of magnitude cheaper if you purchased your own materials than MSOE kits, this was still burdensome to tournaments and/or the school assigned to run Protein Modeling.

nicholasmaurer wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 10:04 am

Unome wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 8:34 am

CookiePie1 wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 8:10 am Super interested in the onsite computer visualization portion. It's sad to see the onsite portion go. Thoughts on this?

$$$

^^^ As an invitational tournament director, the on-site build was expensive to run. While it was easily an order of magnitude cheaper if you purchased your own materials than MSOE kits, this was still burdensome to tournaments and/or the school assigned to run Protein Modeling.

Def agree it was expensive, but then again the test was never really a differentiating factor last year. The CBM tests were pretty easy....im p sure it was more the on-site that separated teams.

AlfWeg wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 2:51 pm

nicholasmaurer wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 10:04 am

Unome wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 8:34 am
$$$

^^^ As an invitational tournament director, the on-site build was expensive to run. While it was easily an order of magnitude cheaper if you purchased your own materials than MSOE kits, this was still burdensome to tournaments and/or the school assigned to run Protein Modeling.

Def agree it was expensive, but then again the test was never really a differentiating factor last year. The CBM tests were pretty easy....im p sure it was more the on-site that separated teams.

At least at the invitational level, there were a number of good tests written by individual ES rather than the standardized test from MSOE. In those cases it was a better differentiator.

nicholasmaurer wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 6:43 pm

AlfWeg wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 2:51 pm

nicholasmaurer wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2019, 10:04 am

^^^ As an invitational tournament director, the on-site build was expensive to run. While it was easily an order of magnitude cheaper if you purchased your own materials than MSOE kits, this was still burdensome to tournaments and/or the school assigned to run Protein Modeling.

Def agree it was expensive, but then again the test was never really a differentiating factor last year. The CBM tests were pretty easy....im p sure it was more the on-site that separated teams.

At least at the invitational level, there were a number of good tests written by individual ES rather than the standardized test from MSOE. In those cases it was a better differentiator.

To be honest, the thing that most differentiated Protein was its points breakdown, not any specific section. I've seen overall point distributions for Protein at 3 tournaments (all of which had >50 teams), and none of them had ties at all. By weighing each section separately, MSOE greatly reduced the chances of ties--it's likely two teams might score the same amount of points overall, but not that likely that two teams will get the same exact point breakdown. As long as there's still 3 sections and (roughly) the same number of points, all should be fine. I don't miss the on-site at all; it's expensive, requires a lot more prep work to organize than a computer, and feels slightly wasteful (especially when the teams don't collect them afterwards).

Agree with Nick. Also will add that even at official tournaments (ie., States), it's not unheard of for ES to tack on their own questions to the end of the MSOE exam.

How do you think the Computer Exploration part of the test will work? What types of questions should we expect to see?

huppada wrote: ↑September 8th, 2019, 1:13 pm How do you think the Computer Exploration part of the test will work? What types of questions should we expect to see?

I think it will be testing the competitors ability to use jmol effectively within the time limit. So maybe a lot of identification questions?

I think it will be testing the competitors ability to use jmol effectively within the time limit. So maybe a lot of identification questions?

I can't think of how they could make identification questions hard though as Jmol is pretty straightforward. I feel like the questions would lean more towards chem principles and less identification; if they focus on how effective competitors can use Jmol then it would just be more of a coding event.