In living organisms, every protein—a type of biological polymer consisting of hundreds of amino acids—carries out specific functions, such as catalysis, molecule transport, or DNA repair. To perform ...

Proteins are important molecules that perform a variety of functions essential to life. To function properly, many proteins must fold into specific structures. However, the way proteins fold into ...

High-resolution structures of nascent polypeptide chains in complex with the ribosome — the cell’s protein-synthesis machinery — reveal how the ribosome guides protein folding. Ribosomal attachment ...

Katherine Bourzac is a freelance journalist in San Francisco, California. Proteins’ functions are closely tied to their often-complex 3D structures. Some have specialized pockets or protrusions that ...

The latest short science news items from C&EN. Proteins are vital for life, involved in virtually every biochemical process that makes life possible. They comprise one or more amino acid chains ...

Proteins are long molecules that must fold into complex three-dimensional structures to perform their cellular functions. This folding process occasionally goes awry, resulting in misfolded proteins ...

Origami masters turn simple sheets of paper into ornate sculptures. In the origami of life, our cells must fold proteins into specific three-dimensional shapes before they can carry out their ...

While we often think of diseases as caused by foreign bodies -- bacteria or viruses -- there are hundreds of diseases affecting humans that result from errors in cellular production of its proteins. A ...

Origami masters turn simple sheets of paper into ornate sculptures. In the origami of life, our cells must fold proteins into specific three-dimensional shapes before they can carry out their ...

For those outside the chemistry cognoscenti, the announcement might have seemed little more than researchers patting each other on the back. But the question of protein folding had plagued scientists ...