“It is well known that the thermodynamically stable state of proteins in a crowded environment is insoluble fibrils” [ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. vol. 119 pp. e2122078119 ’22 ]. However even under ideal conditions the time scale for their formation is hours to days [ Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 15, 384–396 (2014) ]. Hopefully it’s even longer (decades) for senile plaques (abeta) neurofibrils (tau) and Lewy bodies (alpha-synuclein) to form. The fact that equilibrium takes such a long time to reach, allows rapid synthesis and degradation of proteins to avoid their aggregation. So we live because our proteins are trapped in a less the equilibrium (metastable) state by kinetics — e.g. a kinetic trap.
-
Recent Posts
- A new way to look at ALS (thank God)
- The brain gets more complicated the closer you study it
- Cassava’s Cognition Maintenance Study may prove Simufilam works
- A touching Mother’s day story — with an untouching addenum
- Does getting COVID19 shrink your brain?
- Local transmission in Beijing, the avalanche continues
- Should you get a second booster of the Pfizer vaccine?
- China is closer to near collapse
-
Recent Comments
- Peter Shenkin on A touching Mother’s day story — with an untouching addenum
- Richard Sherry on Does getting COVID19 shrink your brain?
- Guestspeaker on The wages of inbreeding
- Immanuel Verbondskind on Ashkenazi Jews are extremely inbred
- Fat Domino on New light on protein folding
- mentalblok on A synonymous codon that isn’t
- MStriker on COVID19 is bad for your brain even if you aren’t hospitalized
- luysii on A state surrounded by hostile powers
-
Categories
- Aargh ! Big pharma sheds chemists. Why?
- Anslyn & Doughterty
- Chaotic attractor
- Chemistry (relatively pure)
- Clayden's Book
- Climate (be civil ! )
- Entropy
- Linear Algebra Survival Guide for Quantum Mechanics
- Math
- Medicine in general
- Molecular Biology
- Molecular Biology Survival Guide
- Music
- Neurology & Psychiatry
- Philosophical issues raised
- Pre-meds need to pass orgo
- Quantum Mechanics
- Social issues ( be civil ! )
- The cell nucleus on a human scale
- Theological implications of simple chmistry
- Uncategorized
- What this blog is about
- Willock: "Molecular Symmetry"
-
Blogroll
Chemiotics II 
Comments
As far as I know, Cy Levinthal was the first to have suggested that the native forms of proteins might be due to kinetics and might not be the most stable configuration. See the Wikipedia article on the “Levinthal Paradox”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levinthal%27s_paradox.
Levinthal really was way ahead of curve, wasn’t he? Little did he know that waiting outside the ribosome exit tunnel were chaperones, limiting the conformation space the newly formed peptide could explore