New research, Peppy: A virtual reality environment for exploring the principles of polypeptide structure, published in Protein Science, 2020.

Joel Mackay (USYD) and collaborators built a virtual reality application, ‘Peppy’ aimed at facilitating teaching of the principles of protein secondary structure to undergraduate biochemistry students. Research findings on the implementation and use of Peppy, as well as outcomes of deploying Peppy in undergraduate biochemistry courses were first published in October 2019 in Protein Science.

The application is novel, dynamic and fun to use, allowing “exploration of the relative effects of hydrogen bonding, backbone φ/ψ angles, basic chemical structure, and steric effects on a polypeptide structure”.

Doak, D., Denyer, G., Gerrard, J., Mackay, J., Allison, J. Peppy: A Virtual Reality Environment For Exploring The Principles Of Polypeptide Structure. Protein Science. 2020. 29:157–168. https://doi.org/10.1002/pro.3752.