BCH210H1 Lecture 6: Protein Folding- Anfinsen’s Experiment- Intro

• School: UTSG
• Department: Biochemistry
• Course: BCH210H1
• Professor: Stavroula Andreopoulos

Document Summary

Lecture 6: protein folding- anfinsen"s experiment: protein folding/unfolding/misfolding, anfinsen"s protein folding experiments with ribonuclease, protein sequence determines final folded structure. If you change protein sequence, you may change final folded state (inactive or impaired protein which can result in disease) If a protein consisted of 100 amino acids, and each amino acid had ten conformations, and each conformation was sampled once in. It would take 1077 years to fold the protein: but, folding takes 103 to 10-1 seconds, folding is directed, conformational sampling is restricted restricted to areas (helical, sheet, turn) If you didn"t have disulfide bonds, the protein would unfold at a lower temperatures or concentration change: not essential for activity, just useful. If oxygen is present after beta- mercaptoethanol is used to cleave a the disulfide bond wrong disulfide bond may be formed: disulfide isomerase breaks disulfide bonds that are preventing correct folding.