Get Yourself Into Folding At Home---it's Scientific!

If it were up to me, I would have named this process "Protein Spiraling," but the scientists got to it before I did! So a relatively formless, flat-like, cooked-spaghetti looking, polypeptide string suddenly can't resist "folding" and it springs into action and the result looks like this.

What do I care about protein folding? My ears have been picking up on medical talk over the media, regarding new discoveries that might solve some puzzling and devastating medical conditions - why they happen, how they happen, and why so many of us get a condition called Peripheral Neuropathy that is wreaking havoc in my life! Read about my discoveries here. peripheral-neuropathy-barbed-wire-in-legs-feet-hands It's not a cool condition - pains are many, complicated and hot!

Now, back to Protein Folding. This is the name of the physical process that grips that polypeptide, and results in its "folding" (spiraling) into a characteristic 3-d structure that performs and functions like that particular protein. This and every protein exists in that stringy polypeptide form, what they call a random-coil after it has converted from its mRNA sequence into a 1-d amino acid chain.

It is Amino Acids that act on the polypeptide that cause it to curl up into a 3-d form with a dependable complexity. Now I would call the "stringy" part on the left the native state of this polypep, but I'd be wrong. The native state of the protein is the curlique on the right.

The result of the "folding" is a particular 3-d form, and irregularities or bends where they don't belong, termed "failure to fold into native structure produces inactive proteins" and these inactive gems are likely to be toxic proteins. (Is this what makes parts of some potato skins green?)

Seriously, we don't want inactive proteins; we want the 3-d structure indicative of functional proteins. (for the most part, nearly every element of functional proteins "folds," however some parts do not. Specifically, the build-up of amyloid fibrills, resulting from wrongly folded proteins, leads to neurodegenerative (and other) diseases, studies are leading scientists to believe. Even allergies require misfolded proteins, to activate, because the immune system provides antibodies that only recognize properly folded proteins.

A public domain illustration of the process of protein folding - Chymotrypsin inhibitor 2.