Wednesday, 20 January, 2010

Biophysicists reveal protein folding dynamics

Single-molecule, real-time measurements of a key biological process

Biophysicists at TUM, the Technische Universität München, have published the results of single-molecule experiments that bring a higher-resolution tool to the study of protein folding. How proteins arrive at the three-dimensional shapes that determine their essential functions – or cause grave diseases when folding goes wrong – is considered one of the most important and least understood questions in the biological and medical sciences. Folding itself follows a path determined by its energy landscape, a complex property described in unprecedented detail by the TUM researchers. In this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), they report taking hold of a single, zipper-like protein molecule and mapping changes in its energy landscape during folding and unfolding.

Press information TUM (english)
Press information TUM (deutsch)