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Commentary
Nature Chemical Biology 4, 435–439 (1 August 2008) | doi:10.1038/nchembio0808-435
Cooperativity and biological complexity
Abstract
Levinthal's paradox—the observation that for a protein molecule to fold by randomly sampling all possible conformations would take not the few milliseconds typically seen but longer than the current age of the universe—is a compelling example of how nature uses cooperative interactions to accelerate or otherwise enhance specific processes. The use of cooperativity to circumvent the energetic, spatial and temporal constraints that would otherwise be imposed by physical chemical laws is essential to very many biological events when considered at the molecular level.
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