Pallas Chou and Harrison Ngue created this video as a resource for Chemistry 27: Organic Chemistry of Life at Harvard University in Spring 2022, taught by Professor Emily Balskus.

In this organic chemistry animation, we take a look at one of the most beautiful enzyme mechanisms: assembly line machinery, including fatty acid synthesis (FAS), polyketide synthesis (PKS), and nonribosomal peptide synthesis (NRPS). Natural product biosynthesis and fatty acid synthesis in the context of assembly line enzymology can be a tricky mechanism to understand, so we take a look at it in an organic chemistry context. You will see how the core ideas of fatty acid synthesis can be "discovered" through asking the right questions, such as determining that acetyl CoA and malonyl CoA serve as building blocks to make fatty acids.

Contents:
0:00 Introduction
1:20 Chemical Logic
5:53 Fatty Acid Synthesis
12:27 Polyketide Synthesis
13:37 NonRibosomal Peptide Synthesis
16:27 Recap

Special thanks to Emily Balskus, Tim Brunker, and Anne Marie Crooke for their editing assistance and continued support.

These organic chemistry animations are largely made using Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects, along with minor use of 3blue1brown's custom Python library, manim.

The animation for the nonribosomal peptide synthesis (NRPS) was created by Michael W. Mullowney, at https://michaelmullowney.com/. All credits go to him. The following adjustments were made to the animation during this video:
• Change of colors
• Speed/pausing/tempo of animation
• Changed the T domain to PCP domain
• Labeling of the modules
• Clarified role of Cy domain with text
• Added the Epimerization tailoring domain
• Highlighted certain parts of the mechanism
• Zooming in to emphasize certain aspects

Music:
Pure Water by Meydän
Link:    • Meydän  Pure Water [Creative Commons...  
Forever Sunrise by Jonny Easton
Link:    • Forever Sunrise  Soft Inspirational ...  
Check out his channel
Link:    / jonnyeaston  



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