Protein Folding Can anyone here try in simple terms to explain what is going on in this process? How complicated is this process and at what time/size scale are we talking about here? Peace
My education has stopped at protein synthisis. Wish I could help, but I'll ask my bio teacher tomorrow about it.
err...my teacher didn't want to talk about it, that stuck-up son of a...... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I did find something about it though. Simplified, protein folding is when the protein takes shape to do it's specific function. Like rRNA, wich is like a long piece of string that is twisted and bunched into a globular-type ball. Some proteins are straight, some are curved....the problem scientists have is they don't understand why the go from a straight line (linear) to something with a shape (3-dimensional, like a twisted glob). The time it takes for the protein to take shape is less than a second. Imagine how many proteins our body's cells make every second...and inbetween that time the proteins have be assembled and take their shape...it's a very very short amount of time. A scientist, Christian B. Anfinsen, denatured (heated up and "took apart") a protein. He then found it lost it's shape. When he got rid of the denaturing substance, the protein returned to it's orginal shape. Kind of like stretching a rubber band, then letting go and it returns to its natural shape. Scientists can't figure why certain amino acids (they make up proteins when stringed together) when put together in a certain way, must take a specific shape every time. And it can't be due to something like DNA, where "instructions" are held, because proteins make up DNA! I didn't read the whole article but I got the idea that they think it's because amino acids attract and repel each other, so when two specific ones are next to each other it may make the protein curve. There can be hundreds of amino acids in one protein, so proteins can take an enormous amount of different shapes. source: http://www.people.virginia.edu/~rjh9u/protfold.html I read about half of it. And if you don't have a good background about what proteins are made of and yadda yadda yadda...they have some simple pictures to explain it nicely. Have fun Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
well, that's what you get when you saturate protein with H+ ions ..it's gonna cause it to lose its structure/form (like what happens to a raw egg when heated/fried) .... no doubt about it.
Folding@home Check this out, it's a distributed computing program from Stanford that uses your computer to fold proteins. The site explains protein folding pretty well. My friends and I have a team set up, we're currently ranked arounf 525 or so.
