Review Article of possible interest to some of you
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Annual Review of Biophysics
Vol. 37: 289-316 (Volume publication date June 2008)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.biophys.37.092707.153558)
The Protein Folding Problem
Ken A. Dill Et Al
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.biophys.37.092707.153558The ?protein folding problem? consists of three closely related puzzles:
(a) What is the folding code? (b) What is the folding mechanism? (c) Can
we predict the native structure of a protein from its amino acid
sequence? Once regarded as a grand challenge, protein folding has seen
great progress in recent years. Now, foldable proteins and nonbiological
polymers are being designed routinely and moving toward successful
applications. The structures of small proteins are now often well
predicted by computer methods. And, there is now a testable explanation
for how a protein can fold so quickly: A protein solves its large global
optimization problem as a series of smaller local optimization problems,
growing and assembling the native structure from peptide fragments,
local structures first.
Cheers,
G?nther