BIOL 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Structure Formation, Lysozyme, Hydrophile
28 Mar 2013
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Document Summary
Folding is a directed search of conformational space allowing the protein to fold on a biologically feasible time scale. The levinthal paradox states that if an averaged sized protein would sample all possible conformations before finding the one with the lowest energy, the whole process would take billions of years. Proteins typically fold within 0. 1 and 1000 seconds. Therefore, the protein folding process must be directed some way through a specific folding pathway. The forces that direct this search are likely to be a combination of local and global influences whose effects are felt at various stages of the reaction. This has been described in terms of a folding funnel, in which an unfolded protein has a large number of conformational states available and there are fewer states available to the folded protein. A funnel implies that for protein folding there is a decrease in energy and loss of entropy with increasing tertiary structure formation.
