The protein folding problem

Abstract

Summary. The protein folding problem is the most important unsolved problem in structural biochemistry. The problem consists of three related puzzles: i) what is the physical folding code? ii) what is the folding mechanism? and iii) can we predict the 3D structure from the amino acid sequences of proteins? Bearing in mind the importance of protein folding, misfolding, aggregation and assembly in many different disciplines, from biophysics to biomedicine, finding solutions that would be generally applicable is of the utmost importance in biosciences.